Book-It 'o13! Book #2
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon
Details: Copyright 2012, SelfMadeHero
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Nao Brown suffers from OCD, but not the hand-washing, overly tidy type that people often refer to jokingly. Nao suffers from violent morbid obsessions, while her compulsions take the form of unseen mental rituals.
Working part-time in a 'designer' vinyl toy shop, while struggling to get her own illustration career of the ground, she's still searching for that elusive love-- the perfect love. And in meeting the man of her dreams, she realises... dreams can be quite weird.
Nao's meditation practice is an attempt to quieten her mind and open her heart, and it's through this that she comes to understand that things aren't so black and white after all. In fact, they're much more... brown."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This received favorable attention from The AV Club Comics Panel.
How I Liked It: Poor Nao Brown is yanking herself out of a rut of a shitty relationship, unemployment (she got her job through her ex), and is fresh from a visit to her alcoholic father in Japan where her OCD acting up since she's traveling. We meet her as she's trying to come down from her flight (and its accompanying anxiety) by partaking of a hot chocolate when she bumps into a best friend from college who's in need of someone to take some extra shifts at his "kidult" toy shop. From there, it's a voyage of discovery of many sorts as Nao meets a repair man who she feels is a dead-ringer for her favorite cartoon character ("The Nothing"), reconnecting with her dear friend and his own romantic struggles, all stopping at seemingly every "chapter" for a few pages from "The Nothing" universe, a tale of a boy set to undo an enchantment cast upon him by The Nothing.
The book is a masterpiece, both of storytelling and especially of its art. Dillon's facial expressions in particular caught me, although his attention to background details is no less meticulous. It's clearly a coming-of-age story of a sort, of many of its leads struggling to slay past demons to eke out some kind of satisfying existence. The accompanying "Nothing" story (depicted in a different but no less impressive style of art) clearly coincides with this.
The book isn't flawless: there are some happy endings that are a touch too pat, and a rather predictable storyline about a romance that never was between Nao and her friend/employer is never really resolved. But the book is still breathtaking and the storylines, even the flawed, offer a compelling and enjoyable read.
Notable: Save for the front flap, Nao's illness is never referred to by name in the book, something that might've helped cement her character initially, since another flaw is that the book is a touch too glib (and melodramatic, but that's to be expected) about the disease. If the reader hadn't seen the front flap and had only a shaky and very basic understanding of OCD, Nao's compulsions could seem almost supernatural. Therefore, it was surprisingly gratifying to see in the back of the book (tucked tastefully in the acknowledgments listings) a UK-based link "For more information on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder."
Title: The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon
Details: Copyright 2012, SelfMadeHero
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Nao Brown suffers from OCD, but not the hand-washing, overly tidy type that people often refer to jokingly. Nao suffers from violent morbid obsessions, while her compulsions take the form of unseen mental rituals.
Working part-time in a 'designer' vinyl toy shop, while struggling to get her own illustration career of the ground, she's still searching for that elusive love-- the perfect love. And in meeting the man of her dreams, she realises... dreams can be quite weird.
Nao's meditation practice is an attempt to quieten her mind and open her heart, and it's through this that she comes to understand that things aren't so black and white after all. In fact, they're much more... brown."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This received favorable attention from The AV Club Comics Panel.
How I Liked It: Poor Nao Brown is yanking herself out of a rut of a shitty relationship, unemployment (she got her job through her ex), and is fresh from a visit to her alcoholic father in Japan where her OCD acting up since she's traveling. We meet her as she's trying to come down from her flight (and its accompanying anxiety) by partaking of a hot chocolate when she bumps into a best friend from college who's in need of someone to take some extra shifts at his "kidult" toy shop. From there, it's a voyage of discovery of many sorts as Nao meets a repair man who she feels is a dead-ringer for her favorite cartoon character ("The Nothing"), reconnecting with her dear friend and his own romantic struggles, all stopping at seemingly every "chapter" for a few pages from "The Nothing" universe, a tale of a boy set to undo an enchantment cast upon him by The Nothing.
The book is a masterpiece, both of storytelling and especially of its art. Dillon's facial expressions in particular caught me, although his attention to background details is no less meticulous. It's clearly a coming-of-age story of a sort, of many of its leads struggling to slay past demons to eke out some kind of satisfying existence. The accompanying "Nothing" story (depicted in a different but no less impressive style of art) clearly coincides with this.
The book isn't flawless: there are some happy endings that are a touch too pat, and a rather predictable storyline about a romance that never was between Nao and her friend/employer is never really resolved. But the book is still breathtaking and the storylines, even the flawed, offer a compelling and enjoyable read.
Notable: Save for the front flap, Nao's illness is never referred to by name in the book, something that might've helped cement her character initially, since another flaw is that the book is a touch too glib (and melodramatic, but that's to be expected) about the disease. If the reader hadn't seen the front flap and had only a shaky and very basic understanding of OCD, Nao's compulsions could seem almost supernatural. Therefore, it was surprisingly gratifying to see in the back of the book (tucked tastefully in the acknowledgments listings) a UK-based link "For more information on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder."