Scan barcode
ajaldana's review
adventurous
funny
inspiring
relaxing
fast-paced
5.0
geronimo stilton books were my favorite growing up and this graphic novel gave me the same butterfly excitement-joy-rush that those books did. healy is an awesome cartoonist and a fun inspiration!!
posthumusly's review
4.0
I liked this! Great art and a realistic, down to earth account of hiking the trail.
zellm's review
4.0
Such a sweet comic memoir, Luke is the kind of guy you just can't help but root for.
ingridboring's review
5.0
I absolutely loved this and want to give it 5 stars but come on man, credit Cheryl Strayed by name!!!
v4mpiric4l's review
medium-paced
4.5
Americana (And the Act of Getting Over It) details author Matty Healy's 147 day, 2660 mile (4280 kilometre) hike from California's border with Mexico to Washington's border with Canada. Known as the Pacific Crest Trail Healy recounts the many days and nights he spent along the trail while revisiting his younger self's infatuation with America and its culture as well as the hardships he faced being an Irish immigrant throughout his multiple encounters with the states.
✧ ° ｡ʚ εїз ɞ ｡° ✧
I picked this book up randomly at the library the other week and I'm super happy I did. I appreciated the exclusively red, white and blue colour palette and thought it perfectly complimented Healy's story and the way he was trying to convey it. The longer written elements at the beginning of the chapters served as a nice break between the monotony of the illustrated time on the trail, monotony that no doubt affected Healy at the time much more than it does current readers.
One of my favourite moments from the graphic novel was from quite early on in which Healy decides he's had enough of the trail and outright quits. This occurs roughly 1/3 of the way through so although I knew there was still more story to go I was still surprised that it had happened at all. Often with stories and media that delve into intense hardship like Cheryl Strayd's Wild, Chris McCandless' story in Into The Wild, and Aron Ralston's miraculous survival in 127 Hours there exists an intense power imbalance between man and nature in which the audience understands that the odds are stacked against the lone protagonist, who will overcome said difficulties despite all odds. At this point in time, Americana is not one of these stories. Healy, defeated by the PCT, has no shame in quitting, which was a nice change of pace compared to similar stories of its nature. Despite all he had wanted to achieve, he quit, and the world continued to spin on its axis, unchanged by one man's decision, which I felt was super important both for Healy and the reader. There's no grand spectacle made out of his failure given the (nearly) insurmountable challenge before him, he got futher than a lot of other people and that's okay, and concludes that he had given all he could, and that was okay too.
However, this is not the end of Healy's story as he makes the decision to get back on the trail and see it through to the end. I really liked the subtle nods to Healy's identity as a gay man, such as the time spent with Canyon or his reflection on the 2019 Orlando mass shooting, and I think not including a deeper reflection on the ways in which (most) American culture is heavily anti-LGBTQ+ was a missed opportunity but didn't really take away from the overall memoir.
It feels slightly unfair to critique the pacing of the memoir given that it's someone's personal experiences, but I will say that that hike feels heavily detailed toward the start and begins to become thinner and less detailed as the hike begins to conclude, however this can most likely be attributed to how Healy became more experienced and (presumably) experienced fewer hardships toward the conclusion of the trail. I also would have appreciated a further look into how completing the PCT shaped the rest of Healy's life, perhaps in the form of a prologue, but the last page felt poignant and succinct enough to conclude the epic journey.
✧ ° ｡ʚ εїз ɞ ｡° ✧
I picked this book up randomly at the library the other week and I'm super happy I did. I appreciated the exclusively red, white and blue colour palette and thought it perfectly complimented Healy's story and the way he was trying to convey it. The longer written elements at the beginning of the chapters served as a nice break between the monotony of the illustrated time on the trail, monotony that no doubt affected Healy at the time much more than it does current readers.
One of my favourite moments from the graphic novel was from quite early on in which Healy decides he's had enough of the trail and outright quits. This occurs roughly 1/3 of the way through so although I knew there was still more story to go I was still surprised that it had happened at all. Often with stories and media that delve into intense hardship like Cheryl Strayd's Wild, Chris McCandless' story in Into The Wild, and Aron Ralston's miraculous survival in 127 Hours there exists an intense power imbalance between man and nature in which the audience understands that the odds are stacked against the lone protagonist, who will overcome said difficulties despite all odds. At this point in time, Americana is not one of these stories. Healy, defeated by the PCT, has no shame in quitting, which was a nice change of pace compared to similar stories of its nature. Despite all he had wanted to achieve, he quit, and the world continued to spin on its axis, unchanged by one man's decision, which I felt was super important both for Healy and the reader. There's no grand spectacle made out of his failure given the (nearly) insurmountable challenge before him, he got futher than a lot of other people and that's okay, and concludes that he had given all he could, and that was okay too.
However, this is not the end of Healy's story as he makes the decision to get back on the trail and see it through to the end. I really liked the subtle nods to Healy's identity as a gay man, such as the time spent with Canyon or his reflection on the 2019 Orlando mass shooting, and I think not including a deeper reflection on the ways in which (most) American culture is heavily anti-LGBTQ+ was a missed opportunity but didn't really take away from the overall memoir.
It feels slightly unfair to critique the pacing of the memoir given that it's someone's personal experiences, but I will say that that hike feels heavily detailed toward the start and begins to become thinner and less detailed as the hike begins to conclude, however this can most likely be attributed to how Healy became more experienced and (presumably) experienced fewer hardships toward the conclusion of the trail. I also would have appreciated a further look into how completing the PCT shaped the rest of Healy's life, perhaps in the form of a prologue, but the last page felt poignant and succinct enough to conclude the epic journey.