Be prepared - for a middling childhood memoir comic! Vera Brosgol’s latest book is about her going to a Russian summer camp as a kid and having a bit of a tough time of it. But it’s not all bad and yadda yadda yadda, learning important lessons, etc.
In her afterword she talks about condensing two summers of camp into one to make the narrative more exciting, which is fine, but she also makes some stuff up, which was a bit iffy. The bullied nerd gets to win a bit at the end, Vera stumbles across a moose and has a spiritual moment, she happens to find the missing guinea pig and becomes besties with its owner, she captures the flag at the end; these story beats are too pat and smack of contrivance, watering down the memoir aspect of the book.
Vera Brosgol knows how to cartoon like the devil though and the book is wonderfully drawn. Ultimately Be Prepared just wasn’t that memorable or interesting a story though I expect it’d probably be more meaningful for teen girls going through similar growing pains. If you’ve not read it, I’d highly recommend Brosgol’s previous book, Anya’s Ghost, instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment