By Daniel Clowes
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
ISBN: 978-0-224-08534-2
It wasn't that long ago that Dan Clowes gave us the wonderful Wilson, and here we are with another hardback offering. Clowes specialises in telling the story of the underdog, or even the person that the underdog looks down upon, and in this case it's Marshall, a six-year divorcee who has retreated into himself and lost all confidence with his interactions in the outside world. He's broke, he's sad, and he's lonely, and yet the story opens with him sat waiting in a coffee shop for a blind date. The lady he's meeting is already nine minutes late, so he's being assaulted by self-doubt and indecision, particularly as there are two potential candidates in the shop who may be his date but perhaps are as uncertain as he is. After a couple of toe-curling interactions, and a rather long time later, he enquires if the coffee shop sells alcohol and ends up sat alfresco nursing a bottle of beer. And then his date arrives.
Clowes is a master at subtlety, and often his characters are very plain, ordinary folk that are as much the main reason for their misfortune as they are the victims of it. In this story Marshall very much fits that mould, and what you'd then expect is the character to drag himself ever-lower through his own actions, but Mister Wonderful tells a different tale. Without being sickly sweet or overtly sentimental, it leaves you with a little warm fuzzy feeling.
I don't know if it's down to the successful adaptation to screen of Clowes's Ghost World, but the book certainly has a cinematic art-house feel and is even presented in a wide-screen format. You can hardly blame him if it is the case.
And if you liked that: Try Ice Haven, also by Clowes
No comments yet.