A review by crookedtreehouse
Local by Ryan Kelly, Brian Wood
5.0
I used to love the TV show ALF. So when it first showed up on Hulu over a decade ago, I blogged about how I was going to marathon the first season over the course of a weekend, and write about it. After two episodes, I had to turn it off. Sometimes it's better to have nostalgia for something you once loved than to go back and see how flawed it is, and how you no longer appreciate that form of art.
The fear of nostalgia over quality is why I haven't reread Local since 2009. I was having a rough year. I had a terrible breakup and was starting to hate a job I had once loved. So one weekend, I took some hallucinogens and read Brian Wood's Local, and LOVED it. Not in the "Oh, man, I was so Fucked Up, and I loved this thing, but now I don't remember anything about it." way, but in the "I just had a real intimate connection with this story and this art, and I vividly remember it, and would like to preserve those pleasant and vivid memories" sort of way.
Since then, it's sat on my bookshelf. I've recommended it to people who have also loved it, I redated and rebroke up with the terrible ex, I took a different job in the same industry and don't hate it. So it was time. It was time to reexperience Local. This time, sober.
I love it just as much.
It's a connection of short stories that doesn't follow the traditional narrative chain of "introduce character, introduce trauma, show them making terrible decisions, do or don't redeem them". Instead, the protagonist comes off as possibly identifiable but fairly shitty for the thrust of the book, and then you are presented with a story that may or may not change how you view the character. And there's good reasoning behind the way the story is told. It's not told out-of-order for the sake of being 90s Pulp Fictiony. Instead, it feels like you're meeting a person, making an acquaintanceship or friendship (depending how you feel about her) with someone, and then, after they experience a change in their life, they explain why they are the way they are. It's very satisfying as a reader.
[a:Ryan Kelly|180971|Ryan Kelly|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s art is the True Star of this book, though. Even without the hallucinogens. It's just black and white inks, but the detail and the panel layouts make it feel almost 3-dimensional, like you could pick a Polaroid up off the protagonist's floor.
I would recommend this to pretty much anyone. It remains one of my all time favorite collections.
The fear of nostalgia over quality is why I haven't reread Local since 2009. I was having a rough year. I had a terrible breakup and was starting to hate a job I had once loved. So one weekend, I took some hallucinogens and read Brian Wood's Local, and LOVED it. Not in the "Oh, man, I was so Fucked Up, and I loved this thing, but now I don't remember anything about it." way, but in the "I just had a real intimate connection with this story and this art, and I vividly remember it, and would like to preserve those pleasant and vivid memories" sort of way.
Since then, it's sat on my bookshelf. I've recommended it to people who have also loved it, I redated and rebroke up with the terrible ex, I took a different job in the same industry and don't hate it. So it was time. It was time to reexperience Local. This time, sober.
I love it just as much.
It's a connection of short stories that doesn't follow the traditional narrative chain of "introduce character, introduce trauma, show them making terrible decisions, do or don't redeem them". Instead, the protagonist comes off as possibly identifiable but fairly shitty for the thrust of the book, and then you are presented with a story that may or may not change how you view the character. And there's good reasoning behind the way the story is told. It's not told out-of-order for the sake of being 90s Pulp Fictiony. Instead, it feels like you're meeting a person, making an acquaintanceship or friendship (depending how you feel about her) with someone, and then, after they experience a change in their life, they explain why they are the way they are. It's very satisfying as a reader.
[a:Ryan Kelly|180971|Ryan Kelly|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s art is the True Star of this book, though. Even without the hallucinogens. It's just black and white inks, but the detail and the panel layouts make it feel almost 3-dimensional, like you could pick a Polaroid up off the protagonist's floor.
I would recommend this to pretty much anyone. It remains one of my all time favorite collections.