Clumsy back

Over two hundred pages of love, happiness, sulking, lust, pottery and travelling.

Documenting a year in Jeffrey's life and a year in Theresa's, there's a lot of interesting editing going on here and it's not to hide the truth or point the finger unfairly. Kochalka rightly says that "the frailty of the line perfectly matches the human frailty portrayed in the story". And they are frail. Two straggly little people commuting from his place to hers, catching what time together they can. The scenes are episodic and out of order but perfectly put together. It could have so easily fallen into the category of indie-kid whining but there's something about the water-damaged, mid-period Chester Brown artwork that holds it all together and leaves me a little winded after reading it just now.


Stephen says (because at this point an editor's note is too impersonal):

Mark wrote the above early in 2003 and, as ever with Mark, he succinctly, presciently and accurately captured so much of what has since made Jeffrey a thoroughly deserved international success and, at Page 45, one of the most cherished creators in the hearts of our readership. Since then every single one of Jeff's many books has proved a best-seller here, but it's usually CLUMSY which becomes so many new readers' first experience of his unusual and poignant self-awareness. It's not false humility, it's not self-deprecation: it's just perfectly self-aware.

I've since written that ego is an anathema to Jeffrey Brown: this particular form of autobiography is all about a fragile intimacy and its communication. They do sound on the surface like incompatible bed-fellows, but seeing is believing and reading brings an instant empathy.