A charming, respectful examination of Freud’s work in comic form.
Boxer’s debut graphic novel takes a satirical look at Sigmund Freud by way of anthropomorphic animals who regularly see an avian psychoanalyst.
Mr. Bunnyman enters Dr. Floyd’s office and says that he’s hiding from a wolf that’s chasing him. The doctor believes the wolf is merely a symbol for Mr. Bunnyman’s deeper fears. But later, there’s a Mr. Wolfman at Dr. Floyd’s door who’s questioning his own identity. His father, he says, used to dress him up in lambskin, which he admits that he enjoyed. At his next appointment, Mr. Wolfman, dressed as a lamb, introduces his alter ego, “Lambskin.” Dr. Floyd insists on seeing them separately, so Mr. Wolfman routinely drops off the Lambskin costume at the office. It can talk but not move on its own; the doctor carries her to the couch for therapeutic discourse. Another recent patient is Rat Ma’am, a self-professed thief who fixates on returning a pair of glasses that she says she stole from Dr. Floyd—despite his assertion that he’s still wearing his own spectacles. There’s a bevy of material for the doctor to psychoanalyze, such as Mr. Wolfman’s apparent fear of castration and Lambskin’s discernible limpness. But when the patients’ increasingly complicated lives begin to intersect, it may be a bit too much for even Dr. Floyd to handle. Boxer explains in a preface that although she doesn’t “worship” Freud, neither does she condemn his work. Her book is an endlessly amusing parody of some of Freud’s real-life case histories, including the “Wolf Man” and the “Rat Man,” which Boxer meticulously details in concluding notes. The novel, however, has a hysterically off-kilter tone, particularly when it comes to Dr. Floyd’s literal-mindedness. For example, when Rat Ma’am’s sessions consist of giving the doctor crumbs of information about herself, he complains of the literal crumbs she’s leaving on his couch. Boxer’s line-art illustrations are appropriately stripped down—Dr. Floyd’s office is just a door and a couch—and the squiggly renderings of her characters make them appear animated.
A charming, respectful examination of Freud’s work in comic form.Pub Date: May 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949093-18-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: International Psychoanalytic Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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