My Perfect Life

· Drawn & Quarterly
Ebook
128
Pages
Bubble Zoom
Eligible

About this ebook

Maybonne and Marlys Mullen endure the mortifying highs and lows of middle school in this Lynda Barry classic.

Collected from the strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, which was serialized in alternative weeklies across the continent, My Perfect Life captures the moment when Lynda Barry finds the perfect balance in longer-form storytelling between the bellyaching laughs and the brutal reality checks. Along with the 2022 release Come Over Come Over, this collection continues to spotlight the life of teenager Maybonne Mullen. She suffers through the utterly relatable insults of junior high and the excruciating embarrassment caused by her little sister, Marlys. Hovering in the background, however, is a broken home, parents struggling with addiction, a grandmother who takes her granddaughters from the diverse big city to a bewilderingly bland small town.

Yet fitting into the new school and surroundings is, of course, paramount to a young teenager. Maybonne begins September full of life and excitement. As the school year progresses, she experiences bullying, her first boyfriend, family drama, drinking, and more. The book ends with Maybonne withdrawn and jaded as the reality of her world outweighs the magic.
Maybonne and Marlys Mullen endure the mortifying highs and lows of middle school in this Lynda Barry classic. Collected from the strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, which was serialized in alternative weeklies across the continent, My Perfect Life captures the moment when Lynda Barry finds the perfect ba...

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About the author

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found that they are very much alike. She lives in Wisconsin, where she is an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In 2019, she received the “Genius grant” from the MacArthurs Fellows program.

In addition to What It Is, Barry has written four bestselling and acclaimed creative how-to graphic novels, What It Is; Picture This; Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor; and Making Comics. Her seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek, features Marlys, Maybonne, and Freddie and was collected into The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, The Freddie Stories, Come Over Come Over, My Perfect Life, and It’s So Magic. Her other books include One! Hundred! Demons!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, and The Good Times are Killing Me.
Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found that they are very much alike. She lives in Wisconsin, where she is an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In 2019, ...

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