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A review by luanam
Giant Days by Non Pratt, Boom! Studios
4.0
As with any novelisation of a beloved graphic novel I entered this read worried that it would not do it justice - I needn't have been. It utterly did justice to the three university friends; Daisy (in all her sweet authenticity, earnestness and nascent queerness), Susan (bluntly caustic, practical and ready to rumble for her sense of justice), and Esther (happy goth literary beauty with a flair for drama and for skipping lectures and reading requirements). It not only gave them a whole new adventure as university first years but also fleshed out their characters in a way that detracted nothing from their graphic novel versions and added new insights to their backstories and internal worlds. Susan Ptolemy's backstory involving hunky McGraw and also her somewhat nefarious past was especially a bonus there.
In the meanwhile tension was kept in the foreground with emotional stakes levered as they all find themselves chasing situations while we the reader can see the potential shark fins. This is especially so for Daisy who gets caught up in a manipulative yogic cult and to a lesser degree, but still vexingly 'oh dear no, back away now' situation, Esther's pursuit of Vectra's friendship. What the book does really well is how it balances the emotional tenseness found in the various storylines with wit, humour and a genuine warmth and lightness - this deft alignment of all these diverse components makes it obvious why the author was shortlisted and longlisted for quite a few literary prizes with her previous novel 'Trouble'.
While Susan's character might be my favourite, in this novel Daisy also won me over right from the beginning. She was utterly adorable and had, with Susan and Esther, some delightfully funny scenes as in a few examples below:
From the Halloween party scene - ..."You're missing the point. Sexy's fine, but it should be a choice not a rule. I mean look..." Susan pointed through the door to the front room. "Sexy witch, sexy car mechanic, sexy sentient tree, sexy crayon, sexy mobile phone...sexy tin of beans. But the boys...gross zombie, gross swamp monster, gross monk, gross rugby player..."
"Hey!" The boy whom Susan had non-too-subtly pointed out last took offense. "I've just come from the rugby social. I'm not in costume."
"Even more horrific." Susan shooed him off.
....
"My point is: Why are the men fully clothed and the women in their underwear?" When Susan failed to get any response from Esther, she turned to Daisy. "You're with me on this, right?"
"Umm..." Daisy's attention was bouncing around the room like a pinball. "Many bras. So objectionable. Much patriarchy."
"Daisy!"
The extract Daisy from the 32 social clubs she signed up for at the activity fair scene - "The plan was going well, and, between them Esther and Susan had successfully extracted Daisy from almost every society she'd signed up for. ...Esther's shameless ability to make a spectacle of herself was working out well. There were few people one could rely upon to willfully misunderstand the ethos of the Paper Clip Fanciers by loudly declaring a sexual attraction to stationary and rubbing herself up against a display of pastel-coloured bulldog clips, moaning sensuously and shouting, "Daisy! Thank you so much for enabling my erotic predilections by inviting me to this orgy!"
Daisy had been ejected from the club, and an email with Esther's photo attached had been sent out to every stationary store in Sheffield warning employees not to let her in.
...Susan favored overly competitive involvement and anarchy. She'd entered and opening game of the Snap Soc meeting with such aggression that she'd broken someone's finger and started a bar fight, ..
(To be continued)
In the meanwhile tension was kept in the foreground with emotional stakes levered as they all find themselves chasing situations while we the reader can see the potential shark fins. This is especially so for Daisy who gets caught up in a manipulative yogic cult and to a lesser degree, but still vexingly 'oh dear no, back away now' situation, Esther's pursuit of Vectra's friendship. What the book does really well is how it balances the emotional tenseness found in the various storylines with wit, humour and a genuine warmth and lightness - this deft alignment of all these diverse components makes it obvious why the author was shortlisted and longlisted for quite a few literary prizes with her previous novel 'Trouble'.
While Susan's character might be my favourite, in this novel Daisy also won me over right from the beginning. She was utterly adorable and had, with Susan and Esther, some delightfully funny scenes as in a few examples below:
From the Halloween party scene - ..."You're missing the point. Sexy's fine, but it should be a choice not a rule. I mean look..." Susan pointed through the door to the front room. "Sexy witch, sexy car mechanic, sexy sentient tree, sexy crayon, sexy mobile phone...sexy tin of beans. But the boys...gross zombie, gross swamp monster, gross monk, gross rugby player..."
"Hey!" The boy whom Susan had non-too-subtly pointed out last took offense. "I've just come from the rugby social. I'm not in costume."
"Even more horrific." Susan shooed him off.
....
"My point is: Why are the men fully clothed and the women in their underwear?" When Susan failed to get any response from Esther, she turned to Daisy. "You're with me on this, right?"
"Umm..." Daisy's attention was bouncing around the room like a pinball. "Many bras. So objectionable. Much patriarchy."
"Daisy!"
The extract Daisy from the 32 social clubs she signed up for at the activity fair scene - "The plan was going well, and, between them Esther and Susan had successfully extracted Daisy from almost every society she'd signed up for. ...Esther's shameless ability to make a spectacle of herself was working out well. There were few people one could rely upon to willfully misunderstand the ethos of the Paper Clip Fanciers by loudly declaring a sexual attraction to stationary and rubbing herself up against a display of pastel-coloured bulldog clips, moaning sensuously and shouting, "Daisy! Thank you so much for enabling my erotic predilections by inviting me to this orgy!"
Daisy had been ejected from the club, and an email with Esther's photo attached had been sent out to every stationary store in Sheffield warning employees not to let her in.
...Susan favored overly competitive involvement and anarchy. She'd entered and opening game of the Snap Soc meeting with such aggression that she'd broken someone's finger and started a bar fight, ..
(To be continued)