Spinning

[alobear]

Spinning by Tillie Walden is a graphic memoir about her teenage years as a competitive ice skater. It's also her coming-out story, so it's about identity, self-acceptance and finding your place in the world.

It felt a bit nebulous to me - I mean, the emotion was there and it felt very real, but in a way that hadn't been amended in any way to create the kind of arc you'd expect in a story. Which is fair enough - it's her life, so she can present it any way she likes.

I did find it affecting and the art was very good at conveying all the feelings that went along with the events.

So, overall, I enjoyed it, though I ultimately found it a bit unsatisfying - but then life doesn't have neat endings very often, does it?

Comments

[sugarspankhorn]

i feel you on this one. i love tillie walden's art, but i feel like her work is lacking when it comes to sequential storytelling and it can REALLY mess with a narrative at large. which is a bummer! i felt similarly about not feeling satisfied by the arc, it's hard to critique memoir/autobio. "life doesn't have neat endings very often" is often where i settle too.