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A review by ederwin
The Good Times are Killing Me by Lynda Barry
5.0
This is a prose novel, with small black-and-white sketch illustrations. I state this right away because the majority of Lynda Barry's publications are comics. (I'm shelving this as a "comic", just because....)
It is a bittersweet novel of a lonely 6th grader Edna in the late 60s in Seattle, dealing with the usual growing-up stuff with a special emphasis on her love of music, making friends, and changing race relations.
The Edna in this book feels very much like Barry's character "Marlys". Both are probably partly auto-biographical to some extent.
All editions have reproductions of Barry's mixed-media portraits of musicians at the end, after the story. The musicians include artists from blues, country, and Cajun music, and aren't ones mentioned in the story, but must be ones that the real Lynda Barry is interested in. Example, Ma Rainey:
The 2017 edition includes a short new afterword, also in the mixed-media collage style that Barry uses now, memorializing the girl who inspired one of the characters in the semi-autobiographical story.
These days Lynda Barry spends much of her time teaching classes on creativity. I'm sure she is excellent at it. But I would love more prose novels from her.
It is a bittersweet novel of a lonely 6th grader Edna in the late 60s in Seattle, dealing with the usual growing-up stuff with a special emphasis on her love of music, making friends, and changing race relations.
How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.I had read this already, probably 20 years ago, and was let down because it wasn't as fantastic as my (perhaps) favorite book of all time: [b:Cruddy|29015|Cruddy|Lynda Barry|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442887874s/29015.jpg|1170873], also by Lynda Barry. I only read it again because I found a copy randomly. I'm so glad I gave it another chance. It really is as good as Cruddy, but so very different. While they are both stories told from the point of view of a young girl, in this one the girl is not on an LSD trip or murder spree! (Cruddy is a very dark book.)
The Edna in this book feels very much like Barry's character "Marlys". Both are probably partly auto-biographical to some extent.
All editions have reproductions of Barry's mixed-media portraits of musicians at the end, after the story. The musicians include artists from blues, country, and Cajun music, and aren't ones mentioned in the story, but must be ones that the real Lynda Barry is interested in. Example, Ma Rainey:
The 2017 edition includes a short new afterword, also in the mixed-media collage style that Barry uses now, memorializing the girl who inspired one of the characters in the semi-autobiographical story.
In real life we had no idea what we were talking about and we knew exactly what we were talking about: life, liberty and justice for all. Equality, peace and the right to play kickball together no matter what our people thought of each other.
These days Lynda Barry spends much of her time teaching classes on creativity. I'm sure she is excellent at it. But I would love more prose novels from her.