Blankets (review 3.5/5)

I really liked Goodbye, Chunky Rice, so I was looking forward to Blankets. Craig Thompson’s more recent graphic novel is a coming-of-age sort of story of love and religion and obsession and companionship, mostly hopping between vignettes in the childhood and teen years, from boyhood to first love and after. It is, in fact, Thompson’s own story rendered with impressive honesty.
The artwork is fantastic and the dialogue is great, and Thompson really has a way with body language. From my layman’s I’m-not-a-graphic-novelist perspective, I can see how a graphic medium can make it so difficult to be subtle. There are times when the relationships in Blankets seem too clich?©. On the other hand, that sort of awkward transparency seems appropriate for melodramatic young love, and I really like how he just lets loose and puts it all on the page.