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A review by heelturn2
The Short While by Jeremy Sorese
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
slow, reflective queer slice of life. beautiful art and a comic format I really enjoyed - a mix of paragraphs of text + static images, sometimes more like manuscript illuminations + sequential panel comics.
this book is emotionally dense without feeling heavy - the characters grapple with trauma, witnessing atrocities, struggles with family, deep seated beliefs about themselves and the world, but it never feels melodramatic or heavy handed or like it’s trying to shock you. this was actually kind of a great companion to read right after Sea of Tranquility because both books hit on this theme I love and have been thinking about: insane terrible things happen to you and you keep going because that’s life, and even in the aftermath of this thing life is still good in these little ways.
I think… not many people are good at writing about grief and trauma, either because they haven’t experienced it and fetishize it, they assume their reader hasn’t experienced THIS trauma, or because they’re writing about something so raw it feels like it’s just happened. The Short While is not that - it withholds showing you the traumatic incident itself for a long time, hops around in time, shows you the characters and their responses instead, and then just kind of lets the clock roll forward as things change. there’s no raw sensationalism around the event itself because it’s clear that it marked the characters and changed their relationship with one another. those changes are what’s interesting, not the details of the precipitating event. it’s what makes the world around the characters work as well - the precise history and mechanisms of the oppressive regime the characters live and have lived under aren’t necessary to explain in detail (tho that said I do love an ursula k leguin ass dystopic utopia/utopic dystopia). what’s interesting is how living in that world has affected the characters, their families, their communities…
anyways I’m losing my train of thought but this was a great comic. and it took me like 3 days to read! put more paragraphs in comics!!!
this book is emotionally dense without feeling heavy - the characters grapple with trauma, witnessing atrocities, struggles with family, deep seated beliefs about themselves and the world, but it never feels melodramatic or heavy handed or like it’s trying to shock you. this was actually kind of a great companion to read right after Sea of Tranquility because both books hit on this theme I love and have been thinking about: insane terrible things happen to you and you keep going because that’s life, and even in the aftermath of this thing life is still good in these little ways.
I think… not many people are good at writing about grief and trauma, either because they haven’t experienced it and fetishize it, they assume their reader hasn’t experienced THIS trauma, or because they’re writing about something so raw it feels like it’s just happened. The Short While is not that - it withholds showing you the traumatic incident itself for a long time, hops around in time, shows you the characters and their responses instead, and then just kind of lets the clock roll forward as things change. there’s no raw sensationalism around the event itself because it’s clear that it marked the characters and changed their relationship with one another. those changes are what’s interesting, not the details of the precipitating event. it’s what makes the world around the characters work as well - the precise history and mechanisms of the oppressive regime the characters live and have lived under aren’t necessary to explain in detail (tho that said I do love an ursula k leguin ass dystopic utopia/utopic dystopia). what’s interesting is how living in that world has affected the characters, their families, their communities…
anyways I’m losing my train of thought but this was a great comic. and it took me like 3 days to read! put more paragraphs in comics!!!