A review by pasc96
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

4.0

How is a monster formed? Artist Derf Backderf attempts to find out in his graphic memoir showing his time in high school alongside the to-be infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Unsettling, empathetic, questioning, repulsive, saddening...this book brought out a wild ride of emotions. When I finished it, I instinctively pushed it to the farthest end of the couch; when I stood up, my legs folded beneath me from pins and needles. I realized I hadn't moved for its duration, only to turn the pages. It's a novel-length lament, really, of so many missed interventions and what-ifs, a close look at inherited unacknowledged mental illness, and a devastating portrayal of abandonment taken to its most extreme ends. Read it and be haunted.