Was She Pretty?

by Leanne Shapton

Book Overview

A dreamy exploration of relationships and jealousy . . . pithy and deadpan . . . It's no self-help book." --Salon

What's left when a relationship ends? Where does jealousy come from? Delicately and sensitively, Leanne Shapton (Swimming Studies) ruminates on ex-lovers, and our lovers' ex-lovers. A few expressive pencil lines outline a long-abandoned winter coat here, an ineffably alluring Mona Lisa smile there...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1770462279
• ISBN13: 9781770462274
• Release Date: February 2016
• Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Finding Identity:

There were writings and pictures, different sayings that was kept to the mind, from what I made out it was put together by young girls' patients in an asylum, there were much too be said, but they were limited to expression. This book has been passed around from family and friends and they all get different ideas and view on the characters. The Writer had done an excellent finding for each person. I hope she will do a follow up enjoy seeing what's next. Thanks Leanne!

Everybody wonders, it's just no one talks about it

Have you ever been out with the person you're seeing when you run into someone who they know, but seem not to want to introduce you to? When you ask later, they'll say, "Oh, that was just a friend." In your mind you'll conjure up all manner of sordid details about their past association because, obviously, it was an ex. The jealousy will be overwhelming even though your partner came home with you and seems to have completely forgotten about the encounter. That's what this book is like. Was She Pretty? deals with the insecurities all current boy/girlfriends feel about the ones who came before them. Even if the relationship is long gone, there's something about the fact that the person you're with has a past that was separate from you that's somehow intriguing, and most of us are more than a little curious about who came first. The book is an illustrated story with short vignettes about couples, their exes, and the details that remain to plague the current flame. One woman has an emergency at her boyfriend's house and finds (to both her horror and delight) a half-empty box of tampons. There is the man who will never let his current girlfriend answer the phone in his apartment, and you can just tell she thinks it's because of the ex. These tales are all short, a few lines at the most, but tell a story in just a few sentences. They are further illustrated with the author's drawings to develop the point. I recently read, and enjoyed, Audrey Niffenegger's illustrated novel The Adventuress. It's the closest thing I could liken to Was She Pretty?, though even that comparison is a stretch. Was She Pretty? is an interesting book and will take no time at all to read. If you've been that guy or girl, the distrustful or openly curious one who can't just let the past be the past (and I think we all have at some point or another), it's worth it to see someone put those feelings into words and then illustrate them so candidly.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Anyone who's old enough to have racked up a few ex-lovers, each of whom come fortified with a backlist of their own, will thrill to the economical poetry of this book. It made me feel nostalgic, and a part of something larger than myself. Did she change the names?