Description
In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home is Kurt Ankeny’s debut graphic novel. A series of short meditative vignettes which are by turns comedic, poetic, or absurd reveals the personality of the small New England town where he lived for five years with his family.
Printed in a beautifully subtle grey, Kurts elegant drawings and insights into the various aspects of Ipswich’s personality paint a complex picture of a home. Readers may look at their own town or city with new eyes.
Honors
Featured in Best American Comics and PEN America
First Place Graphic Novel, 2017 The New England Book Show Award
Press
“At times, especially in the beginning, all these moments can see displaced from each other, but as they accrue through the work, you see what Ankeny is building. It’s like being presented with sections of a map that don’t quite fit together at first, but which are being handed to you in a purposeful way, in order to nurture your understanding of the area in the map and give you a different vantage point once the full map is in front of you. Ankeny’s process of doing this is gentle and patient, and it builds up into a rich and gracious examination of place and self and what one means to the other.”
—John Seven, Indie Beat Column, The Comics Beat [Full Review]
“Kurt Ankeny’s In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home (Two Hundred Zoo Press) is a poetic and thoughtfully crafted graphic novel that is centered around the notion of place. Through a series of beautifully drawn interactions, observations, and reflections, Ankeny brings the small Massachusetts town of Ipswich to life. His portrayal of the town’s quirky history, architecture, natural landscape, and people prove that reflecting on one’s home is both achievable and elusive. As a non-native to the area and someone who is part of a multiracial family, Ankeny is keenly aware of what it means to be an outsider. His observational skills are like that of an ethnographer in the sense that he is both detached from his environment and dependent on it. What results is a purposely fragmented tale that highlights the ineffable quality of what makes a place a home.”
—Whit Taylor, Guest Editor for Pen America [Full Review]
“In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home is Kurt Ankeny’s debut graphic novel. Its 120 pages are filled with crisp, clear, pencil renderings of scenes drawn from life and memory which together weave a hybrid form of graphic novel; part observed, part recalled, part created. In Pieces uses this work to get at the natural rhythms that make up day-to-day life. Parts were serialized up at Comics Workbook, which is worth checking out to get an idea of what this is about, but the work has a very different—colder, harsher—feel online compared to the printed version, which is simultaneously warmer and sharper, while also being much more intimate, and just plain better, all around.”
—Bill Boichel, The Copacetic Comics Company [Full Review]
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.