Synopses & Reviews
"[ADRIAN TOMINE] HAS MORE IDEAS IN TWENTY PANELS THAN NOVELISTS HAVE IN A LIFETIME." — ZADIE SMITH
After enjoying over six months on the New York Times Bestseller list and receiving a rave review from the same institution, acclaimed cartoonist Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying is now available in paperback, with an updated cover and French flaps. With this work, Tomine (Shortcomings, Scenes from an Impending Marriage) reaffirms his place not only as one of the most significant creators of contemporary comics, but as one of the great voices of modern American literature. His gift for capturing emotion and intellect resonates: the weight of love and its absence, the pride and disappointment of family, the anxiety and hopefulness of being alive in the twenty-first century.
"Amber Sweet" shows the disastrous impact of mistaken identity in a hyper-connected world; "A Brief History of the Art Form Known as Hortisculpture" details the invention and destruction of a vital new art form; "Translated, from the Japanese," is a lush, full-color display of storytelling through still images; the title story, "Killing and Dying," centers on parenthood, mortality, and stand-up comedy. In six interconnected, darkly funny stories, Tomine forms a quietly moving portrait of contemporary life.
Adrian Tomine is a master of the small gesture, equally deft at signaling emotion via a subtle change of expression or writ large across landscapes illustrated in full color. Killing and Dying is a fraught, realist masterpiece.
Review
"The question looming is: What are we doing with our lives? Tomine offers no easy answers, but his virtuosic touch enriches the exploration." Max Winter, The Boston Globe
Review
"No one uses minimalism to grab your heart quite like Tomine." Vulture: Top 10 Graphic Novels 2015
Review
"This new collection of six interconnected graphic stories is as masterfully wrought as past achievements like Sleepwalk and Summer Blonde, and just as hauntingly evocative of modern American loneliness, anxiety, and hope...Tomine pays attention to the minute gestures: a nervous cross-and-re-cross of the arms, the brief moment when someone glances down at their feet between sentences." Village Voice
Review
"Adrian Tomine can draw, think, write and feel. He sees everything, he knows everything; he’s in your apartment, he’s on the subway, he’s in your dreams. He knows about aging baseball fans and delusional horticulturists, he knows hapless fathers and awkward nerd-girl stand-ups, he knows the single and the married, the mad and the sane, knows when to use a speech a bubble and when silence is enough. He has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime." Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth and NW
About the Author
Adrian Tomine was born in 1974 in Sacramento, California. He began self-publishing his comic book series Optic Nerve when he was sixteen, and in 1994 he received an offer to publish from Drawn & Quarterly. His comics have been anthologized in publications such as McSweeney’s, Best American Comics, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and his graphic novel Shortcomings was a New York Times Notable Book of the year. Since 1999, Tomine has been a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.