Locker Room of the Teenage Mind 
 A couple of things make me a less than ideal reviewer for this book: I have never read a graphic novel before, and the adolescent experience which is its main subject had a totally different flavor from my own, which was fifties rather than early nineties, Britain rather than America, private school rather than public. One thing that is perhaps similar is that I was also raised in an evangelical Christian environment, I also experienced the conflicts between Church teaching and my own emerging sexuality, and I also ended by rejecting it, as Craig Thompson himself seems to have done. For this is something I am sure must be highly unusual: a confessional autobiography (and how!) in the form of a graphic novel. 
 The story is simple. Craig is raised in a Christian household in Wisconsin, sharing a bed with his younger brother Phil, going to church and school, feeling something of an outsider, finding refuge in drawing. His pastor suggests that he might have a vocation as a minister; his religion intensifies and he burns all his drawings. Then at a winter church camp ("Ski for Christ"), he meets a similarly shy girl from the Upper Peninsula, Raina. Somehow he persuades his parents to let him spend two weeks with Raina's folks ("They're Christians too"), and finds himself thrust into an entirely new world. Her parents are in the process of divorcing, her two adopted siblings (both developmentally challenged) cry for attention, and her married sister wants to palm her new baby off on her as much as possible. But all this only makes Craig see Raina as more of an angel, and mutual attraction takes its course--not all the way, but far enough to cause them both anxiety. Then he returns home and his life, and the book, moves on; I almost preferred the later part where not much happens to the tense middle section, where a lot does. 
 I may need instruction on how to read a graphic novel. The form seems to invite skimming fairly rapidly, and the 582 pages would otherwise seem daunting. Of course, one can always linger and catch the details, which often tell you a lot about Craig's world, the burly classmates who surround him, the trappings of muscular Christianity. The review by fellow reader David Schaafsma that persuaded me to order the book, and which I recommend over anything that I might write, calls it "a patchwork quilt of gorgeous, sweeping, romantic images." There are a few of these, certainly, but much of the drawing is bold, chunky, and to the point. Occasionally he does go for a full-page spread that aims at prettiness, as in the example below, but it tends to be a sugary romanticism, idealized rather than real. But then we should remember we are dealing with sensitive teens, who do tend to idealize their emotional world. It is for the same reason, perhaps, that although Thompson can capture faces like that of his Youth Minister with searing accuracy, he is content to draw Raina with the same face throughout; even after they have run their hands all over each other's bodies, she remains an ideal in his mind. 
 I found it a slow book, with long stretches in which very little happens. But I begin to see that it may be precisely here that the graphic novel comes into its own. So much of teen life is boring; so much of falling in love is spending endless hours drinking in all the little details; so much of sex is tender yet repetitive. By giving us a page or more of almost identical images, Thompson can recapture these moods perfectly. I am not sure how well these will come out in small scale, but let me offer two examples. The first is just after Craig has been painting on Raina's bedroom wall when she types out some poems. Asking to see them, he realizes that they all date from the period before they met, making him a little jealous. How well Thompson catches the confusion of emotions: 
 Or this scene, where Craig is changing into his pajamas to spend a night in Raina's bed. Both fully intend to keep their pajamas on, but that does not stop him from hearing the drumbeat of Bible warnings in his head: I Corinthians 6:16, Matthew 5:28, I John 2:15: 
 Although this is not a book for me, I can see why it has been hailed as a classic. It would be a fine present for a teenage boy with all the usual teen confusions, just as reassurance that he is not alone. Or would it? For if his parents are also evangelicals, they might not appreciate you giving it to their son. And the boy might feel you had been peeping into the locker room of his mind, even though he would surely relish finding this book for himself.