The first book from the Chicago author of the "stunning" Building Stories (The New York Times) is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally impaired "everyman," who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time.

"This haunting and unshakable book will change the way you look at your world." --Time magazine

"There's no writer alive whose work I love more than Chris Ware." --Zadie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Swing Time

An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.

Author: Chris Ware
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 09/12/2000
Series: Pantheon Graphic Novels
Pages: 380
Weight: 2.17lbs
Size: 7.08h x 8.22w x 1.55d
ISBN: 9780375404535


Award: 2001 Guardian First Book Award Winner - First Book
Award: 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award Winner - Graphic Novel


Review Citation(s):
Harper's Bazaar 09/01/2000 pg. 424
Entertainment Weekly 09/22/2000 pg. 71
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/2000 pg. 1387
People Weekly 10/16/2000 pg. 55
Library Journal 11/15/2000 pg. 64
New York Times 11/26/2000 pg. 10
Entertainment Weekly 12/22/2000 pg. 136
Entertainment Weekly 02/23/2001 pg. 156
Choice 04/01/2001 pg. 1450
Booklist 11/15/2000 pg. 598
Booklist 02/01/2003 pg. 968
New York Review of Books 12/20/2012 pg. 66

About the Author
CHRIS WARE is widely acknowledged as the most gifted and beloved cartoonist of his generation by both his mother and seven-year-old daughter. Building Stories, released in 2012, received 4 Eisner Awards, including Best Graphic Album, in 2013. His Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth won the Guardian First Book Award and was listed as one of the "100 Best Books of the Decade" by The Times (London) in 2009. An irregular contributor to This American Life and The New Yorker (where some of the pages of this book first appeared) his original drawings have been exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and in piles behind his work table in Oak Park, Illinois.