Drew Canole's Reviews > Ghost World

I enjoyed this a lot more this time around and was surprised to read my original review which expressed very little sympathy for the characters. The world Clowes crafted here feels super realistic, quite the shift from the previous long narrative Velvet Glove. Yet in lots of ways its just as strange and surreal.

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I started reading this book a couple years ago. That same night I was chatting with a cute girl online, and she told me she hated the book and recommended another one. I dropped this book and read the other.

I've read a bunch of Clowes's books in the meantime but I've always shied away from this one due to that false-start. I finally read it the other day, and I realize the woman who didn't like it didn't like it because the characters in this novel are so similar to her - and that's not a compliment. The characters are so full of themselves. They have a strong outward hatred of everything, but the hatred is caused by a lack of self-love. They hate themselves, and they hate their situation (post-high school, shitty jobs, no college plans - no plans at all).

Clowes does an excellent job of letting us into their petty, emotional worlds. There's a few sub-plots that seem really strange, like the protagonists meets a child-molester who really has nothing to do with anything - I suppose Clowes wanted to show that these girls may be awful people but at least they don't hurt anyone(?).

I guess, in the end, I have to agree with all the praise for this book (which is another reason I never read this, I figured it was for sure overrated). It's odd to recommend a book that I didn't enjoy reading, but I think the end of the journey and my reflections on the characters made this book worthwhile.
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