May 2008 - Blankets

Thanks once again to everyone who came out for the discussion of As Simple as Snow last Tuesday. And thanks to Jennifer for her fantastic music compilations! Since this was my first time at the Snug, I’m delighted to say that it was a wonderful place to have a discussion. I hope its a venue we can all agree on for quite a while.
May’s book is Blankets by Craig Thompson. This book is a personal favorite of mine, but I hope that all of you enjoy it as well. Here’s a review from Publisher’s Weekly:
Revisiting the themes of deep friendship and separation Thompson surveyed in Goodbye Chunky Rice, his acclaimed and touching debut, this sensitive memoir recreates the confusion, emotional pain and isolation of the author’s rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, along with the trepidation of growing into maturity. Skinny, naïve and spiritually vulnerable, Thompson and his younger brother manage to survive their parents’ overbearing discipline (the brothers are sometimes forced to sleep in “the cubby-hole,” a forbidding and claustrophobic storage chamber) through flights of childhood fancy and a mutual love of drawing. But escapist reveries can’t protect them from the cruel schoolmates who make their lives miserable. Thompson’s grimly pious parents and religious community dismiss his budding talent for drawing; they view his creative efforts as sinful and relentlessly hector the boys about scripture. By high school, Thompson’s a lost, socially battered and confused soul-until he meets Raina and her clique of amiable misfits at a religious camp. Beautiful, open, flexibly spiritual and even popular (something incomprehensible to young Thompson), Raina introduces him to her own less-than-perfect family; to a new teen community and to a broader sense of himself and his future. The two eventually fall in love and the experience ushers Thompson into the beginnings of an adult, independent life. Thompson manages to explore adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste.
Please join us for our next discussion on Tuesday, May 27 at 8 pm at Molly Malone’s (the Snug) in Forest Park. Hope to see you there.















