By Guy Delisle
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 978-1-77046-117-8
Guy Delisle has made a name for himself with his cartoon travelogues but he also did two wickedly amusing books that collect perverse short tales of bizarre individuals. A User’s Guide To Neglectful Parenting is more like the latter, featuring a collection of short interactions between himself and his children, often displaying a questionable attempt at humour or taking rather too much amusement from their innocence.
Any parent is going to recognise moments where you’ve had to bite your tongue or think fast for a safe route through the awkward questions, so the humour comes from Delisle presenting himself as the person with an utter inability to check himself at those times.
He’s not Homer Simpson, but he does misjudge situations and overstep the mark consistently, resulting in questionable advice and shameful actions time and time again.
One of the vignettes features him cutting up a fallen tree with a chainsaw while being watched by his son. In an utterly inappropriate move he decides to play a trick on his son by dropping the chainsaw while pretending to cut off his own hand. If that wasn’t misguided enough, while his son is in the house screaming for his mum to come out, Delisle notices that the chainsaw’s fall has caused it to leak a puddle of red oil, so he naturally decides to lay himself down next the blood-like substance barely able to contain his mirth.
For Delisle’s sake, let’s hope these are exaggerations and ‘what ifs’ otherwise the bloke’s going to be getting a call from the Canadian Social Services.
This is a little gem of a book, only really let down by a bit of over-reliance on copy and paste at times, and that it doesn’t take all that long to read. Don’t let that put you off, though, because Delisle has created something genuinely amusing that will raise a chortle or two.
And if you liked that: You’ll definitely enjoy Aline & The Others and Albert & The Others, also by Guy Delisle
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