missing dust jacket

With its combination of stark black and white simplicity and acute attention to detail, Craig Thompson’s Blankets is the perfect beginner’s graphic novel. Its understated text proves the perfect bedfellow for its bittersweet illustrations, conveying all that is painful and beautiful in that bright ache of first love. The callous brutality of childhood and the guilt-ridden ecstasy of religious and romantic fervour are subtly rendered in this quiet little masterpiece, which, while perhaps not changing the world, will change the way you’ll look at storytelling. It’s also a joy for anyone with a CD collection filled with early 90s classics – the artwork of Raina’s bedroom is the graphic novel nostalgia equivalent of watching Cameron Crowe’s Singles - a grunge-geek's dream.