Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Graphic novel & Manga artwork

HOME AFTER DARK

David Small

A Novel

From the best-selling author of Stitches comes a long-awaited graphic novel that is a savage portrayal of male adolescence gone awry like no other work of recent fiction or film.

Wildly kaleidoscopic and furiously cinematic, Home After Dark is a literary tour-de-force that renders the brutality of adolescence in the so-called nostalgic 1950s, evoking such classics as The Lord of the Flies. Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt, abandoned by his mother, follows his father to sun-splashed California in search of a dream. Suddenly forced to fend for himself, Russell struggles to survive in Marshfield, a dilapidated town haunted by a sadistic animal killer and a ring of malicious boys who bully Russell for being "queer." Rescued from his booze-swilling father by Wen and Jian Mah, a Chinese immigrant couple who long for a child, Russell betrays their generosity by running away with their restaurant's proceeds. Told almost entirely through thousands of spliced images, once again "employ[ing] angled shots and silent montages worthy of Alfred Hitchcock" (Washington Post, on Stitches), Home After Dark becomes a new form of literature in this shocking graphic interpretation of cinema verité. David Small is author of the #1New York Times best-selling Stitches, is the recipient of the Caldecott Medal, the Christopher Medal, and the E. B. White Award. He and his wife, the writer Sarah Stewart, live in Michigan.

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Book Published 2018-09-11 by Liveright

Comments

...haunting coming-of-age tale...In depicting the toll of the harsh environment surrounding these lost boys, Small unearths an (almost) impossible tenderness. Read more...

David Small's new graphic novel, Home After Dark, is the story of Russell, a teenaged boy abandoned first by his mother and then by his father. It's about Russell's adolescence but also everyone's: learning who you can and can't trust, the complexities of relationships with your peers, and figuring out who you are and the kind of person you want to be. Russell's struggle to survive and not be crushed by the indifference or cruelty of the world drew me in. The drawings are gorgeous and expressive - Small's facial expressions alone filled me with awe. A wonderful book and a great follow-up to Stitches.

Chinese Simplified: Ginkgo (Beijing): French: Groupe Delcourt ; Italian: Rizzoli ; Korean; The Open Books ; Portuguese (Brazil): Darkside Entretenimento ; Serbian: Modesty Stripovi ; Spanish: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial

Small is a master storyteller, moving the tale swiftly through pages with a wonderful array of panels, many of which are wordless or have just a choice bit of dialogue or narration; his illustrationsemotive, kinetic, with a striking balance of realism and cartoon and particularly arresting facial expressionsspeak volumes. Grappling with questions of identity and society, the story has the authenticity and ache of universal experiencefiltered through the singular eye of a visionary. Powerful and profound.

Home After Dark is incredibly moving. David Small is among the most masterful storytellers alive today.

A master graphic storyteller who has certainly captured male adolescence in 1950s America. Having to think about dodging high school bullies every day sure resonated with me! And Russell's sexual predicament was handled in a very original way.

...an important novel about adolescence and the search for identity...Small is a masterful illustrator, with an incredible ability to establish his characters' inner lives through physical gestures or facial expressions, conveying a kaleidoscopic style of storytelling reminiscent of filmmaker Terrence Malick...Small has managed to create an even more resonant and stirring work.

Veteran artist and illustrator Small turns a deeply focused lens onto the isolation, loneliness, and relentless cruelty of male adolescence in this immensely powerful new work. ... Drawn in Small's signature style, the narrative feels more like a series of sketches that capture the choices made by Russell and the people around him, snapshots of actions and consequences rather than a traditional narrative. The illustrations, limited to pen, ink, and washes done in a simple, loosely sketched style, convey the nuanced range of emotion of all things left unsaid. Spare and powerful, this is not to be missed.

I thought David Small's Stitches was as good as a graphic novel could get, and I was right. Home After Dark is not a novel, whatever the publisher chooses to call it. It is a poem-in-pictures, evocative and heart breaking and simple and pure. And I am not sure I will ever recover from it. Think of Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye joined as one, yet even more painfully honest. This a haunting work of unfolding surprise. Few words, cinematic pictures, dazzling art.

As an adolescent, when I read Conroy's Stop Time, or Weesner's The Car Thief, or Wolff's This Boy's Life, the prose drew rich images of youth before my eyes, and defined me. David Small, in his sparsely written graphic novel, Home After Dark, has ingeniously created the reverse sensation. The silence of his masterful drawings has put words in my mouth - words that recapture the inchoate chaos of youth.