Little Things: A Memoir in Slices back

Jeffrey reassesses the nature of autobiography in comics once again. The unashamedly frank Girlfriend Trilogy reached its epitome with AEIOU. A stark, challenging read compared to CLUMSY and UNLIKELY, AEIOU refused to meet you half way. Jeffrey deconstructed what he learnt with his previous work, restricting the scope of a particularly sticky relationship to Jeffrey's unique point of view, so as to leave you as bruised and confused as him.

With LITTLE THINGS (his first full-length autobio book since) Jeffrey loses the self-enforced restrictions and the singular focus on relationships, instead offering us glimpses of a more rounded person through the thirteen short stories about those moments that define him. Far from being a jumbled collection of inconsistent stories, they flow naturally like synapses, connecting themes out of seemingly unconnected events.

The first story in the collection gently hints at the structure, being about associating music with certain times in our life, in particular here a turbulent relationship. The sense of loss stays as we're then shown an indirect experience of loss during Jeffrey's childhood. The sight of the ambulance in the last few panels links nicely to the next chapter, a story about a road accident, then the theme of travel moves us to the next story, which is about a happier tale about a trip to the mountains, and so on.

The events which form the book are not everyday, but moments which almost everyone will experience in some form or another in their lifetime. The ability to convey the impact of these common experiences and the opportunity for self-reflection they offer would be lost on almost any other cartoonist (or author, or artist). Under Jeffrey's pen they remain as coherent and heartfelt as a teenager's lovelorn Mixtape.