Ghost World & Monica

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes (1998) 80 pages

A slim story in eight chapters. Friends Enid and Becky have finished high school and spend their time making snide, sarcastic observations about the people in their town and programs on TV. It was adapted into a 2001 movie, which I watched after reading this. The movie changes a lot, and I only gave it 3 out of 5 stars. Minimizing the character John Ellis was good. Minimizing their friend Josh from school was not a good decision. There is a lonely character, who places a wanted ad in the paper to meet a woman, and the girls play a prank on him. This character is played by Steve Buscemi in the movie. Buscemi, or his agent, or a close producer friend must have been the one to make the deal to turn this into a movie because this character is hugely expanded. He almost has as much screen time as Enid's character. It becomes less about Enid and Becky as their friendship grows apart, but that is one of the strongest parts of the graphic novel.

Monica by Daniel Clowes (2023) 106 pages

A portion of the Goodreads synopsis says, "Monica is a multilayered masterpiece in comics form that alludes to many of the genres that have defined the medium — war, romance, horror, crime, the supernatural, etc. — but in a mysterious, uncategorizable, and quintessentially Clowesian way." I see the influence of the different genres, but I would not call this a masterpiece. I found it weird and disturbing.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, 471 pages, 

translated from Italian, Book 2 in the Neapolitan Novels series

I became interested in the novels after watching the HBO series My Brilliant Friend. I immediately fell in love with the two main protagonists, Lila and Lenù, little girls growing up in post WWII Naples. The telling of their brutal childhood is handled with raw innocent grace: difficult childhoods are difficult to narrate. Following Book 1, which lays out the girls’ lives in their dusty square of multi-family apartment buildings, the broken adults, the near feral children, their bare-bones school, and the steely bond between the two, this Book 2 reaches into their adulthood, such as it is. Lila marries at 16, hardly an adult, while Lenù eventually leaves the grey life of Naples by train, attends University in Pisa, to gain academic status, and new bonds. 

Their lives sharply cut away from each other by outward appearances. But both battle restrictions set upon them from within and out, in the backdrop of the 60’s, as social, gender, class upheaval brews. Lila weaponizes all resources within her grasp to fight the life that seems decided before she was born, a life still full of suffocating limits and violence. Meanwhile, Lenù, given opportunities of freedom that Lila can no longer even dream about, wrestles with a chronic unease of not ever escaping her Neapolitan identity no matter how accomplished, masterful and socially connected she becomes. And in these struggles, their bond is measured and tested. I am really looking forward to reading Book 3. The filmed series is very enjoyable, but the writing offers a more exquisite tale.