Scan barcode
A review by havelock
Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody by Mike Dawson
2.0
Freddie and Me is a graphic memoir about Mike Dawson’s lifelong love of the band Queen, and of Freddie Mercury in particular.
I was a huge Queen fan as a teenager. I still love listening their music, but I was near-obsessed with them from about thirteen to nineteen. So this would seem like a perfect book for me. And I could definitely relate to a lot of the author’s experiences regarding his love of the band, and how music can have a big impact on your life.
But overall, I found the book rather dull. Which feels like a cruel thing to say about a person’s memoir, but ultimately Dawson’s life here is pretty average; he loves Queen, his family moves to America when he’s a child, he still loves Queen, he has a few romances that don’t go anywhere, he talks about Queen some more, he’s an angsty teen who wants to run away, he gets elitist about music, he still loves Queen… you get the picture. It’s an ordinally life blandly told, and there’s really not enough in my opinion to warrant a memoir, and certainly not one that’s over 300 pages.
There are some interesting musings on memory I liked and that I wish were explored more, and Dawson is certainly a talented artist, but the best I can say about this is that it makes for a quick read.
I was a huge Queen fan as a teenager. I still love listening their music, but I was near-obsessed with them from about thirteen to nineteen. So this would seem like a perfect book for me. And I could definitely relate to a lot of the author’s experiences regarding his love of the band, and how music can have a big impact on your life.
But overall, I found the book rather dull. Which feels like a cruel thing to say about a person’s memoir, but ultimately Dawson’s life here is pretty average; he loves Queen, his family moves to America when he’s a child, he still loves Queen, he has a few romances that don’t go anywhere, he talks about Queen some more, he’s an angsty teen who wants to run away, he gets elitist about music, he still loves Queen… you get the picture. It’s an ordinally life blandly told, and there’s really not enough in my opinion to warrant a memoir, and certainly not one that’s over 300 pages.
There are some interesting musings on memory I liked and that I wish were explored more, and Dawson is certainly a talented artist, but the best I can say about this is that it makes for a quick read.