Summer Blonde

With a deft and romantic touch, Tomine portrays the emotional ambivalence and intellectual questing of drifting, urban twenty-somethings in stunning black and white. The comix-form stories comprising Summer Blonde are appealingly naturalistic, stylishly cinematic, and emotionally rich. Tomine often seems to be eavesdropping on his characters' most intimate moments, exhibiting their insecurities with both forensic detachment and surprising compassion. "Bomb Scare," the final story in this collection, was selected for the 2002 Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology.

Praise

"Reading a comic book suddenly becomes as rewarding as reading good contemporary fiction . . . Tomine has both talent and a writer's eye for the truth."—Nick Hornby, The New York Times Book Review

"He's on to something that other comix artists haven't captured—a slacker generation growing older but not wiser."—Andrew Arnold, Time

"Intense . . . Tomine gets loneliness and disconnection pitch-perfect."—Los Angeles Times

"A combination of great minimalist art and literature."—Jane

"Immaculately rendered . . . Emotionally adroit . . . Summer Blonde is compulsive melancholy."—The Village Voice Literary Supplement

"[Summer Blonde] has the kind of detail and romantic yearning which has made Tomine a cult figure to the still young and the kind of artistry which has made him a classic storyteller to anyone of any age."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Tomine's stories ultimately get at the inner uncertainties one can't pin down just in pictures, or in words. He's unquestionably doing some of the most sophisticated fiction in comics today."—Chris Ware, author of The Smartest Kid on Earth

"Brilliant . . . Visually gripping and emotionally challenging . . . A major young comics artist."—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author(s)

Adrian Tomine

Adrian Tomine was born in 1974 in Sacramento, California. He has been writing and drawing the comic book series Optic Nerve since 1991, and has produced two previous book collections, 32 Stories and Sleepwalk and Other Stories. His comics and illustrations have also appeared in a variety of magazines, including The New Yorker, Time, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Details, and Giant Robot. Tomine lives in Berkeley, California

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