GHOST STORIES is about hockey and family and senility and aging and loneliness and heartbreak, among other things. It's beautifully rendered, cinematic in a just-surreal-enough way - the image of a streetcar in a field of wheat is one of those touches of whimsy that avoids being cloying, and the casual depth of the writing engages the reader on an emotional level that can be uncomfortable without reaching the levels of (self) loathing that, say, Tomine can induce. There's a few moments in this book where I paused, sort of amazed at the reaction it was pulling from me, perhaps a bit jealous.

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Product Description

The second volume in a trilogy of graphic novels set in a fictionalized version of Lemire's hometown of Essex County, Ontario, Ghost Story follows the lives and relationship of brothers Lou and Vince Lebeuf over the course of nearly seven decades. In this volume, eldest brother Lou, now a deaf and lonely man, lives out his final days on his farm full of guilt and regret for the decisions he made that tore his family apart. From their childhood on the farm, to Toronto in the 1950's (where they both played professional hockey), Lou is left to revisit his life, his decisions and his regrets. A silent observer, haunted by his own memories.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #330931 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
I just finished a great graphic novel called Ghost Stories by Jeff Lemire. I had tears in my eyes when I was done, and I really didn't expect it to take that kind of toll; after all, it's about an old man who used to be a hockey player. Lemire is a gifted storyteller, and his book is equal parts Field of Dreams and, say, Fried Green Tomatoes. It gave me a new appreciation for life on the ice. --Whitney Matheson, USA Today

Lemire's pen renders the town and farm land in the bleakest black and white, with lines that are like gashes in the characters' souls. Their pasts are reflected in their faces, craggy and broken like the earth they walk on -- it's a stylistic triumph of sequential illustration. --John E. Mitchell, North Adams (MA) Transcript

Old Lou Lebeuf wanders in and out of the past in the house on the family farm where he and Vince grew up. After a brief fling in pro hockey, Vince, though good enough to have a real career, married and went back to the farm. Not Lou, who kept playing until his knee gave out. Eventually he wound up in Toronto, only going home after 25 years, when Mom died, and then not again until an accident left Vince crippled and widowed. When Vince died, that left Lou alone. As always, Lou thinks, also thinking he knows why: the night he made out with Vince's fiancée definitely the reason Vince wouldn t have Lou coming back after Mom was buried. Lemire handles the stuff of a Willa Cather novel with equal poetry, though in images made of lines and spaces rather than words. He renders emotion and temperament in a cartoon face with breathtaking, masterful economy. He manages transitions between present and past and sequences of magic realism as deftly and hauntingly as Ingmar Bergman in Wild Strawberries and Orson Welles in Citizen Kane. Is it too soon to say that Lemire is a major graphic novelist? --Booklist (starred review)

About the Author
Born in a tiny farming town in southwestern Ontario, Canada in 1976, cartoonist Jeff Lemire now resides in Toronto. His previous projects include two issues of his self-published anthology comic Ashtray (2003) as well as the Xeric-Award-winning graphic novel Lost Dogs (2005). His Essex County trilogy has been nominated for the Ignatz Award and two Eisner Awards, received the American Library Association's Alex Award (for adult books with teen appeal), and won the Joe Shuster Award for outstanding Canadian comic book cartoonist. Most recently, he was named Best Emerging Talent at Canada's Doug Wright Awards in August 2008.

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Customer Reviews

Amazing
Both books in this series of what is to be a trilogy have been so well written and drawn, that my head has fallen off each time I read them, and I keep going back.

Engaging Character Study
Jeff Lemire's Ghost Stories is technically a sequel to Tales From The Farm, the first volume in his Essex County (Canada, not Jersey) trilogy, but you don't need to have read it to enjoy the engaging tale of Lou Lebeuf, an almost-was hockey star in the early 50s, and his younger brother Vince, a genuine phenom who chooses family life on the farm over superstardom, a decision that has far-reaching repercussions.

Lou -- a lonely old man, deaf and seemingly suffering from Alzheimer's -- tells their story via flashbacks that often drift into and out of hallucinations, and Lemire's precise black-and-white artwork, deftly shifting between the realistic and metaphorical, beautifully communicates every emotion, both those on the surface and those bubbling underneath. The underlying premise of city mouse/country mouse plays out across seven decades, shifting back-and-forth in time as the titular Ghost Stories are the haunting memories of Lou's past that hinge on two key moments: his brother's decision to give up hockey, and his own one-night affair with his sister-in-law. He's a compelling figure whose ultimate fate is self-directed and hard-earned, yet he never comes off as unlikeable and Lemire never judges him one way or the other.

Another winner from Top Shelf and highly recommended.