Palookaville #21

“Reading Seth, the great Canadian cartoonist who dresses and draws like a man out of time, is an act of ever-shifting reconciliation . . . Seth keeps sliding and eliding our feel for the past -- which in turn challenges our perspective on the present. Missed kisses, or conversations unspoken, or paths untraceable, keep lapping back from our personal histories, beating against our assumptions of accumulated wisdom.” —Washington Post

“Tinged with an undeniable melancholy, these are stories that capture that acute pain that comes from looking back at yourself, the mixture of pathos and helpless desire to change some of what you went through, not to make it better, but just to make it slightly less uncomfortable...but what emerges is a dual sense that we are formed unfortunately early as people and that the letting go that marks the passage from youth to adulthood is only the most memorable of an endless series of the same.” —National Post

“Seth's seemingly autobiographical stories drew immediate acclaim when he began Palookaville two decades ago. His heartbreakingly melancholy return to that mode shows how completely he has mastered his craft in the ensuing two decades.” —Booklist