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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
Entertaining, but I think the way the author delivered the story is sometimes too in-your-face.
I have been rewatching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for years, but I've never read any of Bryan Lee O'Malley's work until Seconds. It was such a treat--funny, engaging, real, and beautifully laid out.
Seconds is a really effective meditation on perfectionism, control, neglect, and what we do to render our spaces unsafe. Katie, though decisive and brusque, is also privately insecure and lonely. She is at a restless time in her life, existing between her unresolved past (Seconds) and an uncertain future (Lucky's/Katie's). Instead of facing her overwhelming anxiety and insecurity, she obsesses over the restaurant she's leaving behind to the point of antagonizing and actively hurting her coworkers. When Lis's mushrooms grant her the power to compulsively revise her life, she seizes it with both hands, but with a wildness and insensitivity that shows us the people and places who are neglected when we don't relinquish some of our stubbornness and our need to control things. She hurts both of the men with whom she's involved and she allows Lucky's to fall into ruin.
Katie's quest for perfectionism also makes her life increasingly imperfect because, in seeking control, she accidentally subordinates herself. Max inadvertently casts a shadow over her and we see that even though Katie has been lonely, she's also had an independence and power that she loses with every romantic revision.
As Katie becomes more and more desperate and selfish, she makes both restaurants--both past and future--literally and emotionally unsafe spaces. In this way, we can also read the book as a statement about toxicity. Seconds regards even our manmade environments as alive and able to be hurt, and every revision shortchanges the people and places around her to the point of rank disrepair and despair. Katie makes her own life uninhabitable for herself and for those around her.
Lastly I want to say that I think Bryan Lee O'Malley afford his characters a lot of grace to make mistakes. They are not perfect and sometimes not even likeable (except for Hazel, an easy favorite). But it is really lovely that just because Katie is ambitious sometimes to the point of selfishness doesn't mean she is unworthy of happiness. She is a profoundly regular person and also profoundly herself.
What a solid and beautifully composed book. Literally the one star off is because at the end it feels like things fall together a little too easily.
Seconds is a really effective meditation on perfectionism, control, neglect, and what we do to render our spaces unsafe. Katie, though decisive and brusque, is also privately insecure and lonely. She is at a restless time in her life, existing between her unresolved past (Seconds) and an uncertain future (Lucky's/Katie's). Instead of facing her overwhelming anxiety and insecurity, she obsesses over the restaurant she's leaving behind to the point of antagonizing and actively hurting her coworkers. When Lis's mushrooms grant her the power to compulsively revise her life, she seizes it with both hands, but with a wildness and insensitivity that shows us the people and places who are neglected when we don't relinquish some of our stubbornness and our need to control things. She hurts both of the men with whom she's involved and she allows Lucky's to fall into ruin.
Katie's quest for perfectionism also makes her life increasingly imperfect because, in seeking control, she accidentally subordinates herself. Max inadvertently casts a shadow over her and we see that even though Katie has been lonely, she's also had an independence and power that she loses with every romantic revision.
As Katie becomes more and more desperate and selfish, she makes both restaurants--both past and future--literally and emotionally unsafe spaces. In this way, we can also read the book as a statement about toxicity. Seconds regards even our manmade environments as alive and able to be hurt, and every revision shortchanges the people and places around her to the point of rank disrepair and despair. Katie makes her own life uninhabitable for herself and for those around her.
Lastly I want to say that I think Bryan Lee O'Malley afford his characters a lot of grace to make mistakes. They are not perfect and sometimes not even likeable (except for Hazel, an easy favorite). But it is really lovely that just because Katie is ambitious sometimes to the point of selfishness doesn't mean she is unworthy of happiness. She is a profoundly regular person and also profoundly herself.
What a solid and beautifully composed book. Literally the one star off is because at the end it feels like things fall together a little too easily.
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was quite different from what I was expecting, and I liked it - very fresh. More "new adult" than teen, I'd say (main character is actually 30 I think), but it definitely has appeal for both audiences. Smart, kind of creepy, entertaining, and believable. Liked it a lot.
RA Notes: drinking, sex, nudity (sort of - you see some butt crack and a naked back of the girl, naked chest of the guy), language (not much, though)
RA Notes: drinking, sex, nudity (sort of - you see some butt crack and a naked back of the girl, naked chest of the guy), language (not much, though)
Now this is how to properly create a time-travel story. The plot threads generally made sense in the context of the world, and avoided getting overly convoluted. Kate was a really nicely fleshed out character, and I especially loved the dynamic between her and the omnipotent narrator;).
It's a nice little reminder of the old moral 'actions have consequences that must be dealt with.'
It's a nice little reminder of the old moral 'actions have consequences that must be dealt with.'
fast-paced
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
"Seconds" is a graphic novel which shows what the consequences are of getting a second chance in life. When the novel begins, Katie wakes up from and discovers a woman sleeping on top of her bedroom dresser. The unknown woman points to a dresser drawer and tells Katie to use what's inside the dresser drawer if things go wrong then leaves. Katie goes to the dresser drawer, finds nothin inside the drawer and go back to sleep with no member of the encounter happening.
The first chapter introduces the reader to Katie in a fun way in that the narration box is different from Katie's thoughts. The reader follows Katie to Seconds which is a restaurant she started with her friends four years ago. Now at age 29, Katie has dreams of opening her own restaurant across the river from seconds with her business partner Arthur. Although steps have been taken to disconnect Katie from her role as chef at Seconds, she refuses to stop visiting the restaurant and harassing the chef she chose to replace her. After Katie sees her Max, ex-boyfriend, with another woman at the restaurant, she is upset and confused. In an effort to forget about seeing her ex-boyfriend, she picks a fight with the Andrew, new chef (who's she's having a fling with.) During Katie & Andrew's tryst in the kitchen wall in freezer, Hazel, a restaurant employee, gets seriously injured.
After Katie takes Hazel to the hospital, her and Andrew's fling fizzles. As Katie is sitting a home feeling sad for her role in Hazel's accident, she remembers the woman from her dream and checks the drawer. Inside the dresser drawer, Katie finds a box with a note, a notebook, and a mushroom. The note inside the box promises a second chance by writing a mistake, ingesting a mushroom, then going to sleep. Katie immediately writes down her mistake, eats a mushroom and goes to sleep.
The second chapter focuses on Hazel and Katie getting to see the effects of the magic mushroom. She is shocked that Hazel is no longer injured and follows up with Andrew to ask what happened the night before. During this chapter, Katie begins to stalk Hazel and compares her to other employees. Although everyone feels that Hazel's weird and quiet, they like having her working at the restaurant because she makes everyone else look good in comparison. Katie commends to Hazel that she admires her devotion to clearing the restaurant every night and this is when Hazel discloses that she does odd rituals every night so because she believes the restaurant has a house spirit and wants to make the house spirit happy.
The third chapter focuses on Lis which is discovered to be the name of the house spirit which was created and drawn by Hazel as an imaginary friend. Katie shares a dish with her former co-workers at Seconds and although they liked the dish, they balk when she tells them the dish is for her restaurant. She runs away and eat the rest of the her meal in the restaurant's walk in freezer then discovers more mushrooms under the floorboards. Katie plans to eat the mushroom again when she is confronted by Lis who tells her she only gets one chance with one mushroom and there are rules. Katie runs into Hazel and this is when she discovers what Lis truly is.
The fourth chapter on the book focus on rules and Katie's breaking an unknown rule regarding taking a pot from an old building. Katie empties that old pot and in the restaurant basement and fills the pot with twelve mushrooms. After taking the mushrooms to her apartment which is located above the restaurant, the remainder of this chapter is Katie making bad decisions and eating mushrooms to correct her bad decisions.
The fifth chapter has Katie waking up next to Max and her getting used to the new reality she finds herself in. Katie is saddened by the lack of progress at her new restaurant and is shocked to discover a change in her relationship with Max. Although Katie is in a new world, something remain the same such as her flings with Andrew and her friendship with Hazel. Once again, Katie decides to eat the mushrooms in order to fix the problems she sees in her life which infuriates Lis.
The sixth and final chapter has Katie visiting Hazel at her house and Hazel telling her a story about warring house spirits. Unbeknownst to Katie, each time she has ingested a mushroom and gone to sleep, she has left another world in ruins and this has created a mass of dark energy. Eventually Lis and this mass of dark energy fight for control of Seconds in a dead world and Katie discovers that the mass of dark energy is a mirror of herself. Once she accepts that Seconds isn't her restaurant anymore any her is responsible for all the choices she has made. After giving the final mushroom to Lis, Katie falls asleep unsure of what future awaits her.
When Katie awakens, she is in a hospital bed and is visited by Arthur as well as Hazel. Hazel still has the injury from chapter one but she is much better. After Arthur drops Katie off at Seconds, she and Max have a brief conversation and make amends. Life returns to normal at Seconds, she opens her restaurant and her and Max are back together.
This graphic novel was a great read in that is shows the consequences of each of Katie's "revisions" and also the transformation of someone not conscious of their actions into someone who is very self aware. By the end of the novel, Katie accepts that although life isn't always perfect, she has to live with the result of all the choices she makes whether the choices are good or bad.
The first chapter introduces the reader to Katie in a fun way in that the narration box is different from Katie's thoughts. The reader follows Katie to Seconds which is a restaurant she started with her friends four years ago. Now at age 29, Katie has dreams of opening her own restaurant across the river from seconds with her business partner Arthur. Although steps have been taken to disconnect Katie from her role as chef at Seconds, she refuses to stop visiting the restaurant and harassing the chef she chose to replace her. After Katie sees her Max, ex-boyfriend, with another woman at the restaurant, she is upset and confused. In an effort to forget about seeing her ex-boyfriend, she picks a fight with the Andrew, new chef (who's she's having a fling with.) During Katie & Andrew's tryst in the kitchen wall in freezer, Hazel, a restaurant employee, gets seriously injured.
After Katie takes Hazel to the hospital, her and Andrew's fling fizzles. As Katie is sitting a home feeling sad for her role in Hazel's accident, she remembers the woman from her dream and checks the drawer. Inside the dresser drawer, Katie finds a box with a note, a notebook, and a mushroom. The note inside the box promises a second chance by writing a mistake, ingesting a mushroom, then going to sleep. Katie immediately writes down her mistake, eats a mushroom and goes to sleep.
The second chapter focuses on Hazel and Katie getting to see the effects of the magic mushroom. She is shocked that Hazel is no longer injured and follows up with Andrew to ask what happened the night before. During this chapter, Katie begins to stalk Hazel and compares her to other employees. Although everyone feels that Hazel's weird and quiet, they like having her working at the restaurant because she makes everyone else look good in comparison. Katie commends to Hazel that she admires her devotion to clearing the restaurant every night and this is when Hazel discloses that she does odd rituals every night so because she believes the restaurant has a house spirit and wants to make the house spirit happy.
The third chapter focuses on Lis which is discovered to be the name of the house spirit which was created and drawn by Hazel as an imaginary friend. Katie shares a dish with her former co-workers at Seconds and although they liked the dish, they balk when she tells them the dish is for her restaurant. She runs away and eat the rest of the her meal in the restaurant's walk in freezer then discovers more mushrooms under the floorboards. Katie plans to eat the mushroom again when she is confronted by Lis who tells her she only gets one chance with one mushroom and there are rules. Katie runs into Hazel and this is when she discovers what Lis truly is.
The fourth chapter on the book focus on rules and Katie's breaking an unknown rule regarding taking a pot from an old building. Katie empties that old pot and in the restaurant basement and fills the pot with twelve mushrooms. After taking the mushrooms to her apartment which is located above the restaurant, the remainder of this chapter is Katie making bad decisions and eating mushrooms to correct her bad decisions.
The fifth chapter has Katie waking up next to Max and her getting used to the new reality she finds herself in. Katie is saddened by the lack of progress at her new restaurant and is shocked to discover a change in her relationship with Max. Although Katie is in a new world, something remain the same such as her flings with Andrew and her friendship with Hazel. Once again, Katie decides to eat the mushrooms in order to fix the problems she sees in her life which infuriates Lis.
The sixth and final chapter has Katie visiting Hazel at her house and Hazel telling her a story about warring house spirits. Unbeknownst to Katie, each time she has ingested a mushroom and gone to sleep, she has left another world in ruins and this has created a mass of dark energy. Eventually Lis and this mass of dark energy fight for control of Seconds in a dead world and Katie discovers that the mass of dark energy is a mirror of herself. Once she accepts that Seconds isn't her restaurant anymore any her is responsible for all the choices she has made. After giving the final mushroom to Lis, Katie falls asleep unsure of what future awaits her.
When Katie awakens, she is in a hospital bed and is visited by Arthur as well as Hazel. Hazel still has the injury from chapter one but she is much better. After Arthur drops Katie off at Seconds, she and Max have a brief conversation and make amends. Life returns to normal at Seconds, she opens her restaurant and her and Max are back together.
This graphic novel was a great read in that is shows the consequences of each of Katie's "revisions" and also the transformation of someone not conscious of their actions into someone who is very self aware. By the end of the novel, Katie accepts that although life isn't always perfect, she has to live with the result of all the choices she makes whether the choices are good or bad.
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes