Description

Come Over, Come Over by Lynda Barry

Hardcover- Drawn & Quarterly – 2022 – 128 pages

Lynda Barry captures all the glorious magic and excruciating pain of junior high school in this Ernie Pook Comeek collection from the early 90s. The star of this collection is 14 year old Maybonne who relays the angst and insecurity of life through hand scrawled diary entries, class assignments, and letters, in cursive with doodle and bubble letters. Barry deftly portrays the capricious nature of teen friendships, adolescent peer-pressure, and the kill or be killed nature of a middle school’s social scene in her signature style.

In an authentic teen voice full of diffidence and melodrama, the bespectacled and freckled Maybonne relates all of life’s indiginities on equal measure. Heartbreaking stories of a broken home, child molestation, an alcoholic absentee father and a bitter mom emerge between strips about home ec class, summer vacation, and babysitting, illustrating Barry’s peerless ability to make the reader both cry and laugh.