Spaniel rage
Description
“I love [Davis’s] free-form drawing . . . She just has a funny, truthful voice.” —Audrey NiffeneggerVanessa Davis’s autobiography, more observational than confessional, delighted readers ten years ago when she first began telling stories about her life in New York as a young single Jewish woman. Spaniel Rage is filled with frank and immediate pencil-drawn accounts of dating woes, misunderstandings between her and her mother, and conversations with friends.Her keen observation of careless words spoken casually is refreshingly honest, yet never condemning. Unabashedly, Davis offers up gently self-deprecating anecdotes about her anxieties and wry truths about the contradictions of life in the big city. These comics are sexy, funny, lonely, beautiful, spare, and very smart—the finest work from a natural storyteller.“[Davis creates] structurally sound, stylistically individual images that also manage to seem totally casual and spur-of-the-moment. The cliché “she makes it look so easy” is acutely appropriate for Vanessa and her work.”—Rookie“The frank, personal specificity of [Spaniel Rage] keeps you gripped.”—Vulture, 8 Comics You Need To Read“...a warm, familiar voice … Spaniel Rage holds an amazing freshness 12 years after it was published. It certainly deserves Drawn & Quarterly’s February reissue.”—Paste“[Spaniel Rage collects] snapshots of her life that feel both utterly familiar and totally weird … a pleasant delve into young life in the city.”—Library Journal“Often funny, often tinged with loss, Davis chronicles a life page by page [and] touches on the anxieties of the internet age.”—The Comics Journal“This work [has] the strange power of making me feel like Davis broke into my apartment and scribbled her life into my personal notebook, just for me.”—Broken Pencil“An honest, unflinching set of loose cartoons… at its core, the commonalities of the cartoons in Spaniel Rage reflect the quirks of daily life itself.”—Bookriot, 5 Graphic Novels To Watch In For February“If you dig slice-of-life graphic novels, then you’ll want to pick up Spaniel Rage from Vanessa Davis … the graphic-novel equivalent of a Seinfeld episode about twentysomethings.”—London Free Press
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Published Reviews
Library Journal Review
Drawn & Quarterly's loving reissue of Davis's personal works from the early 20th century documents a mostly free-flowing diary of a moderately bohemian lifestyle in 2003 New York City. Davis sits around in her underwear, goes to the movies, mopes about dudes, and sings to herself while walking down the sidewalk, among other more and less intense pursuits. Although far less disciplined than cartoon diarists such as Gabrielle Bell and John Porcellino, she, like them, shares snapshots of her life that feel both utterly familiar and totally weird. Her slightly lumpy, scribbly penciling style and panel-free pages further add to the casual touch. Her ugly-cute approach to storytelling and illustration seems portentous of the coming era of the TV series Girls and Broad City, in which every quirky aspect of a young woman's experience is up for observation, celebration, and self-reflection. Verdict Spaniel Rage is a pleasant delve into young life in the city and interesting to read as motivation for a new generation of artists who look to women like Davis and her contemporaries for inspiration, but the work itself delivers a slightly aimless, loosely collected read.-Emilia Packard, Austin, TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
LJ Express Reviews
Drawn & Quarterly's loving reissue of Davis's personal works from the early 20th century documents a mostly free-flowing diary of a moderately bohemian lifestyle in 2003 New York City. Davis sits around in her underwear, goes to the movies, mopes about dudes, and sings to herself while walking down the sidewalk, among other more and less intense pursuits. Although far less disciplined than cartoon diarists such as Gabrielle Bell and John Porcellino, she, like them, shares snapshots of her life that feel both utterly familiar and totally weird. Her slightly lumpy, scribbly penciling style and panel-free pages further add to the casual touch. Her ugly-cute approach to storytelling and illustration seems portentous of the coming era of the TV series Girls and Broad City, in which every quirky aspect of a young woman's experience is up for observation, celebration, and self-reflection. Verdict Spaniel Rage is a pleasant delve into young life in the city and interesting to read as motivation for a new generation of artists who look to women like Davis and her contemporaries for inspiration, but the work itself delivers a slightly aimless, loosely collected read.—Emilia Packard, Austin, TX (c) Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.