Product Description

Sometimes, you have to escape your past to get to the truth. ComicsLit introduces another amazing talent with a deeply felt story about growing up in a northern New York State mill town. After years of being away and making a life for himself, Shane finally travels back home. On his way, his mind is flooded with the memories of his blue-collar family under tremendous pressure and pushed to the breaking point by alcoholism and abuse. For a kid growing up in this, the pain can be tremendous. As an adult, resentment battles reconciliation. Beautifully evocative full color art.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2259272 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 94 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The graphic novel is an excellent medium for the growing-up story, but works best when it focuses on plot rather than circumstance, on movement rather than Wordworthian spots of time. This book, full of eerie images from an impoverished and abusive '70s childhood, resembles a tone poem. It lingers in reminiscence and summary—fine for the psychoanalyst's couch and male teens quietly wallowing in self-pity, but it doesn't make a story that transcends its adolescent origins. White is a fine artist with moments of real meaning (for instance, a man in one panel, morphing to a teenager in a man's clothing, morphing into a little boy, all three with the same luggage), but he fails to put these images together into a narrative. He might produce a fine second or third book, but the audience for these jewel-like pastels and cold white images of the winter wastes of New England feels limited to men who remember, too vividly, their bad Vietnam-era childhoods. It doesn't help that much of the narrative is grim and wordy, reading like a rough therapy session. Some of the panels, especially those dealing with a suicide, are so evocative as to be transcendent, but this is largely a book of unrealized promise. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up–An introspective story about a man going home to visit his family and reliving his past along the way. Many of Shane's memories are painful. As he reflects on incidents in which his father repeatedly abused his family and once shot a cow in the head after it kicked him, readers may wonder why the young man would even consider returning home. Throughout the book, the quality of the artwork is consistently high, with two notable instances standing above the rest. The first is when Shane remembers trying on the Superman cape made by his mother and realized to his dismay that he could not actually fly. The stylistic change and the images of Superman himself juxtaposed against the boy's emotional outpouring are extremely effective. The second is when the family dynamic finally changed when Shane's father confessed to an affair and (literally) crumbled to pieces before his son. The cover at first seems misleading–the image of a man walking with an axe through the snow seems reminiscent of The Shining–but after subsequent readings it makes sense as readers consider the constant threat of violence in the father/son relationship. North Country moves from a strange beginning into a deeply textured story. It can be read again and again, and each time teens can appreciate different nuances in the writing and artwork.–Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Autobiographical comics are usually graphically idiosyncratic. They look "personal," not like more-or-less realistic mainstream comics. White breaks with that convention to present his graphic-novel memoir very realistically and conservatively: there are exactly nine congruent square panels on most pages, a line never extends outside of a frame, and caricature is used only for irony. White pulls out the stops, however, in terms of point of view, expressive color, and storytelling technique. After a fanciful, life-before-life opening sequence, he casts the narrative as a series of flashbacks from himself at thirtysomething traveling to see his parents at his childhood home in Ontario. The flashbacks disclose a troubled-family scenario: capricious and abusive father; nurturing but angry and verbally demeaning mother; and first child (White) who acted out at school, struggled with situational depression, and saw his sister as a rival for scant parental affection. Things end happily, though, as White greets his parents warmly, feeling forgiveness for them and himself. A far from uncommon life story beautifully rendered. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Darkness Before Dawn
I'm biased here, OK, cuz I grew up w/the author & was there for a lot of this graphic novel as it happened...Shane paints a tough look back at growing up in our hometown in NNY.

The artwork is splendid and enhances the surreal moments of this tale & also never lets the reader leave the grip of the plot. Be ready for some harsh, revealing story elements that are given a strange visual beauty in North Country.

Nice work, Shane! More on the way??

Creative and Inspirational
Shane's artistic view of his childhood events is thought provoking and motivational.

I was in a class with Shane as a child and have not seen him in over 20 years now.

I do remember Shane as a happy boy who motivated his classmates to be more creative with their drawing.

Shane's book is a pleasant surprise to see that he continues to use his artistic abilities to entertain and motivate people.

Shane has a wonderful gift of creativity that motivates others to want to test their own creative artistic expressions of life events. Any artist or philosopher seeking inspiration will enjoy Shane's work.

I look forward to seeing more of Shane's future artistic endeavors.