Inappropriate

by Gabrielle Bell

Overview

2 IGNATZ AWARD NOMINATIONS: Outstanding Collection + Outstanding Story

Foreword Indies Finalist

One of the Best Graphic Novels of the Year — Library Journal

Gabrielle Bell returns with a brilliant new collection of hilarious short stories. From a revisionist Red Riding Hood, to uncomfortable role reversals, Gabrielle Bell revels in skewering modern mores with razor-sharp humor and wry observations. Culled from The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Medium, including several brand new previously unpublished gems, Inappropriate collects Bell’s best short comics form the last couple of years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941250389
Publisher:	Uncivilized Books
Publication date:	03/17/2020
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gabrielle Bell’s work has been selected several times for Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and has been featured in McSweeney’s, The Believer, Bookforum and Vice magazines. Her story, “Cecil and Jordan In New York,” was turned into a film by Michel Gondry. The Voyeurs was named one of the best Graphic Novels of the year by Publishers Weekly. Gabrielle Bell currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Editorial Reviews

11/18/2019

Bell (Everything Is Flammable) explores the pitfalls and vulnerabilities of modern urban living to tender, wry, and often hilarious effect in this collection of short comics. Bell’s portraits have a lived-in feel: her pen-and-ink visuals linger on the bags under eyes, the wrinkles in clothes, and the rough masonry of New York City streets, rendered in flat, muted colors. In contrast, her subjects mix up the mundane and the fantastic. “Sometimes I wonder if Kate Middleton ever draws comics,” she wonders, “because even now, I still have my princess dreams.” Red Riding Hood idles away her days with the Wolf, who’d rather fix up old cars than eat grandmothers; dogs lead humans around on leashes; and Bell herself trudges to the East River to do her laundry by hand, because revealing she doesn’t know how to use the new washing machine is too unbearable to consider. The tension between these flights of fancy and the grit of her art knits together the disparate collection of stories into a winsome cohesive whole. In detailing her daydreams, Bell gets readers to feel uncomfortable in the most marvelous way. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"This new book gathers blackly humorous pieces (published in The New Yorker, Vice and elsewhere) that mix the surreal with the seemingly autobiographical — a Gabrielle figure who, say, visits a dreamy young dental student for a root canal, only to have her molars forcibly extracted by chatty mobsters later in the day. I’m reminded of what Benjamin Cheever wrote of his father John’s journals, their commitment to truth endlessly subverted by him as a “fiction machine”: “Give him a screwdriver, have him walk across the room, and he’d be holding a hammer.”"—Ed Park, The New York Times

Ed Park

Praise for The Voyeurs: "As she watches other people living life, and watches herself watching them, Bell's pen becomes a kind of laser, first illuminating the surface distractions of the world, then scorching them away to reveal a deeper reality that is almost too painful and too beautiful to bear." — Alison Bechdel, Fun Home "The Voyeurs is the work of a mature writer, if not one of the most sincere voices of her literary generation. It's a fun, honest read that spans continents, relationships and life decisions. I loved it." — Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library "A master of the exquisite detail, Bell provides a welcome peephole into our lives." — Françoise Mouly, The New Yorker "One of the Best Nonfiction Books of the year." —Kirkus Reviews "One of the Best Graphic Novels of the year." —Publishers Weekly "Best Graphic Memoir."—The Atlantic Wire "One of the best things going in auto-bio inflected comics these days." — Art Spiegelman

"Memoir and fiction stand side by side, often in the same story, in this frequently hilarious, occasionally melancholy collection that affirms Bell’s status as one of the best cartoonists of her generation."—Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2019

An encounter with a dog walking its pet human along the sidewalk, a confessional tale of using Jungian theory to overcome social anxiety, a fantasy of discovering a British prince living in exile on the streets of Brooklyn, and a letter to a neighbor who insists on lounging nude in front of his window—it's difficult to imagine any cartoonist other than Bell (Everything Is Flammable) daring to combine such disparate stories into a single volume. And yet these tales, along with others that range in topic from a botched root canal to the life of a 43-year-old spider to the difficulty of saying "I love you" fit together seamlessly owing to Bell's masterful storytelling and the sense that each is the raw expression of an artist who can't help pondering the world, wondering about her place in it, and offering her observations with unflinching honesty. VERDICT Memoir and fiction stand side by side, often in the same story, in this frequently hilarious, occasionally melancholy collection that affirms Bell's status as one of the best cartoonists of her generation.

Library Journal