I've missed you Jeffrey Brown! I had a chance to hang out with Jeff last weekend before a presentation at Toronto Public Library. The presentation renewed my interested in his books. I was a big fan of the "Girlfriend Trilogy" back in the day and I was delighted to read Little Things. Consisting of a number of autobiographical stories of different lengths, reading this book is like visiting an old friend. While the stories don't have much of a plot impact, they wash over you and leave the reader with a feeling - sometimes loss, sometimes melancholy, sometimes awe, sometimes indifference. I'm usually a reader who enjoys a good plot but Brown's work is really an exception for me and I'm happy to have found it again. ( )

Brown attempts here, with mixed success, to move away from his usual autobiographical depictions of relationship drama. However, in these stories it's as if the lack of drama loosens the tension required to make his life seem interesting. The 'little things' he chooses to write about don't often rise above the mundane to a level holding more universal appeal. His storytelling appears tentative and sometimes awkwardly paced. Not surprisingly then, it's when he does give in to his urge to spill the romantic beans that the book is most interesting. This is where he has always excelled. Now that Brown is married with kids, though, one can see why in 2008 he began scouting out beyond the serial dating territory he mined so thoroughly in his younger years. Perhaps he has sharpened the focus of his autobio lens even more since this book, although most recently he has been writing more about Darth Vader than about himself. ( )

Well, I didn't hate it. But it wasn't nearly as good, or as evocative, as Cat Getting Out of a Bag and Other Observations. ( )

Like Norman Rockwell or Gary Larson, I find Brown's artistry in the action he freezes in each panel more than the drawing itself: the line of sight, the specific frame within the moving image. His style evolves across the pieces here, so it's not that he isn't paying attention to drawing, but I find myself nodding at a circumstance distilled into a single shot, and it's that he successfully captured the entirety of it that gets me nodding, not the way he sketched the panel. In that sense it's as much his conception as it is his rendition of the panel.

His drawings have a strong DIY aesthetic: I'd call it punk, he uses "indie comics" more than once but I think it's pretty much the same thing. Not certain how much this aesthetic is deliberate versus an acceptance of his abilities, I suspect Brown is less tied to his drawing limitations than Larson claimed to be.

The author's note at the end of my edition indicates Brown writes / draws both autobiographical graphic novels (like this one) and humourous comics. I wonder how different is his work between the two genres: in writing and in how they're drawn. ( )

Little Things, a graphic novel by Jeffrey Brown (author of Be a Man, Clumsy), is geared towards the mature audience as the story deals with material such as sex, death and life of a young adult. Little Things is Jeffery's life story told in thin "slices" from various points of time in his life. Jeffery's "slices" are bits and pieces of his life that can be a few hours to a week to longer. People move in and out of the "slices" never seeming to stay for very long or come back, but seem to make a lasting impact within his life. Time never stands still and is constantly moving on to the next story or the next person. The last "slice" of Jeffrey's life deals with the birth/pending birth of his child.

Where the story suffers is that the move through timelines if often disjointed in places, transitioning from present to past back to present in what is often confusing. Where the story seems to fail is that there are no clear transitions in this passage of time. The reader is lost as to the passage of time and place with no clear indication of what might be happening. The graphic novel uses simple black and white lines to create the universe and life that Jeffrey resides. Jeffrey captures the world around him, from rescuing ants in a stream to his young son next to him, with simple and often elegant line drawings that show a deeper meaning to life.

Although the time line can be confusing, the story is an interesting experiment in telling a story. ( )