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jakekilroy's review
4.0
Just such a tiny, delightful sense of world and humor in its basest illustrative form — a wonderfully fun and considered display of objects as people and people as objects, really. I also think of magazine spot illustrations totally anew now!
ursulamonarch's review
3.0
I'm guilty of overlooking the 'spots' in the New Yorker, so it was nice to have them collected here. The book's size, while appropriate for these illustrations, felt a little awkward. I was interested in McGuire's work from his book Here, and this collection didn't live up to my (high) expectations.
dav's review
3.0
This was a four star book, but I'm docking it a star for seemingly bending physics willy-nilly in the middle of a particular sequence for, I assume, some misguided sense of convenience in the service of creating delight. The book generated plenty of untarnished simple delight, so I postponed writing this review for a few days, to see if I could shake the one mishap, but in that time my annoyance failed to lessen, so bye bye star #4.
Here's the gist of my complaint. In one sequence we are following a series of framing and reflections as we move backwards through and outside of an apartment. So we're expanding out a three dimensional construct on each step in our heads which is quite fun, but in the middle at one point we are shown the ever shrinking and receding series in a mirror of an above the sink cabinet of a bathroom.
And in the next step, we are shown the same reflection, but this time through the window that was visible in the last step.
In other words, we are shown the exact same reflection from two different goddamn angles!
It shook me to my core.
Here's the gist of my complaint. In one sequence we are following a series of framing and reflections as we move backwards through and outside of an apartment. So we're expanding out a three dimensional construct on each step in our heads which is quite fun, but in the middle at one point we are shown the ever shrinking and receding series in a mirror of an above the sink cabinet of a bathroom.
And in the next step, we are shown the same reflection, but this time through the window that was visible in the last step.
In other words, we are shown the exact same reflection from two different goddamn angles!
It shook me to my core.
maliajackson's review
4.0
This was utterly delightful. I love really distilled visual storytelling. I love charming anthropomorphization. I love unexpected little twists and turns. This had all of that. It makes me wish I were someone who diligently reads the New Yorker every week and pores over all the little interstitial art that makes it such a special publication.
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