Synopses & Reviews
From the Harvey and Lulu award-winning creator of
Artbabe comes this riveting story of a young womans misadventures in Mexico City. Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, heads to Mexico City to “find herself.” She crashes with a former fling, Harry, who has been drinking his way through the capital in the great tradition of his heroes, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Harry is good—humored about Carlas reappearance on his doorstep—until he realizes that Carla, who spends her days soaking in the city, exploring Frida Kahlos house, and learning Spanish, has no intention of leaving.
When Harry and Carlas relationship of mutual tolerance reaches its inevitable end, she rejects his world of Anglo expats for her own set of friends: pretty-boy Oscar, who sells pot and dreams of being a DJ, and charismatic Memo, a left-wing, pseudo-intellectual ladies man. Determined to experience the real Mexico, Carla turns a blind eye to her new friends inconsistencies. But then she catches the eye of a drug don, el Gordo, and from that moment on her life gets a lot more complicated, and she is forced to confront the irreparable consequences of her willful innocence.
Jessica Abels evocative black-and-white drawings and creative mix of English and Spanish bring Mexico Citys past and present to life, unfurling Carlas dark history against the legacies of Burroughs and Kahlo. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida-at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal-is a story about finding oneself by getting lost.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
From the Harvey and Lulu award-winning creator of
Artbabe comes this riveting story of a young womans misadventures in Mexico City. Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, heads to Mexico City to “find herself.” She crashes with a former fling, Harry, who has been drinking his way through the capital in the great tradition of his heroes, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Harry is good—humored about Carlas reappearance on his doorstep—until he realizes that Carla, who spends her days soaking in the city, exploring Frida Kahlos house, and learning Spanish, has no intention of leaving.
When Harry and Carlas relationship of mutual tolerance reaches its inevitable end, she rejects his world of Anglo expats for her own set of friends: pretty-boy Oscar, who sells pot and dreams of being a DJ, and charismatic Memo, a left-wing, pseudo-intellectual ladies man. Determined to experience the real Mexico, Carla turns a blind eye to her new friends inconsistencies. But then she catches the eye of a drug don, el Gordo, and from that moment on her life gets a lot more complicated, and she is forced to confront the irreparable consequences of her willful innocence.
Jessica Abels evocative black-and-white drawings and creative mix of English and Spanish bring Mexico Citys past and present to life, unfurling Carlas dark history against the legacies of Burroughs and Kahlo. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida-at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal-is a story about finding oneself by getting lost.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Jessica Abel is the author of
Soundtrack and
Mirror, Window, two collections that gather stories and drawings from her comic book
Artbabe, which she published between 1992 and 1999. She also collaborated with Ira Glass on
Radio: An Illustrated Guide, a nonfiction comic about how the public radio program This American Life is made. Abel won both the Harvey and Lulu awards for Best New Talent in 1997;
La Perdida won the 2002 Harvey Award for Best New Series. Abels young adult novel,
Carmina, is forthcoming in 2007, and she is currently collaborating on another graphic novel,
Life Sucks, and a textbook about making comics.
From the Hardcover edition.