Off season

Sturm's soberly bleak account of the disintegration of a family, set in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, is viewed through the eyes of a struggling contractor newly separated from his wife and dealing with an accumulating series of setbacks: a boss who ducks out on paying him, a car accident, his mother's cancer diagnosis. His stressful life makes what should be minor mishaps a misplaced cell phone, a forgotten permission slip for his daughter's field trip seem more like small-scale calamities even as he derives fleeting comfort from outings with his kids and Thanksgiving with his family. No stereotyped blue-collar Trump supporter he had a Bernie sticker on the truck he was forced to sell to afford his new apartment he finds that the melancholic post-election climate reflects and reinforces his despondency. Sturm's treatment of this poignant material is quietly masterful: elegantly simple line drawings toned with washed-out greys reflect the somber mood as well as the New England winter landscapes. His restrained approach uses uniform panels, two to a page, and economical character designs that depict the family members as anthropomorphized canines, which serves as a distancing device. Sturm has responded to the present-day raw nerves and sense of dislocation with an eloquently relatable work deserving of a wider readership beyond followers of graphic novels.--Gordon Flagg Copyright 2019 Booklist

The romantic underpinnings of this bleakly drawn and emotionally raw graphic novel from Sturm (The Golem's Mighty Swing) are buried under Yankee stoicism and the sniping crossfire and precisely drawn quotidian scenes of loss in a failing marriage. But these loosely linked chapters on the travails of a grumpy contractor feeling pressed on all sides-cheating boss; angry, nearly divorced wife; tantrum-tossing children-all host a kernel of longing. The dialogue is clipped and astute, threaded neatly into delicately steely art by Sturm, whose naturalism is so pronounced that it takes only a few pages to forget that he has drawn all the characters as dogs (albeit wearing clothes, driving cars, and walking on two legs). In between the contractor's bursts of frustrated rage ("I need to get back to work-I don't have a trust fund"), nods to the dark tides of frustrated masculinity that swept through the 2016 election, and snarky sarcasm ("Bernie sticker on his Mercedes-Benz. A real man of the people"), Sturm slips in short, bright glimpses of grander possibilities. This finely wrought, politically agitated graphic fiction recalls Raymond Carver, and speaks almost too painfully to the personal strife in today's political climate. (Feb.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Mark and wife Lisa, passionate supporters of Bernie Sanders, find themselves disoriented and depressed after the senator's presidential campaign comes to an end. Three months later, Lisa has rallied and thrown herself into supporting the Hillary Clinton campaign, but Mark can't help but feel adrift, left behind and more than a little angry, especially after his marriage begins to crumble. Suddenly Mark is tasked with figuring out how to raise two small children on his own, reconnect with his aging parents, and deal with a boss who sports a Bernie bumper sticker on his BMW but seems suspiciously quick with an excuse every time Mark asks for a paycheck. Sturm (The Golem's Might Swing) presents a masterfully illustrated meditation on masculinity, family, and the modern American psyche, delivered with such empathy and insight into the human condition that from page to page readers might forget that all of the characters are anthropomorphized dogs. VERDICT Many readers will relate to the spiritual malaise Sturm captures here, but it's the story's ultimately hopefully ending that makes this the first truly essential graphic novel to tackle American life since 2016. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.