Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #493647 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-13
• Released on: 2006-06-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Originally published in her comic book Dirty Plotte, then collected in 1995 (and slightly expanded for this edition), Doucet's adaptations of her dreams are some of her weirdest, strongest and funniest work. The French-Canadian artist writes in hilariously crumpled English (one story is called "An Happy Ending Nigthmare" [sic]) and draws herself as an abject, bedheaded mess ambling through a world littered with garbage. She doesn't seem to hold anything back from her subconscious—sexual fantasies, genital mutilations, messy apartments—they're all represented. One section is devoted to dreams in which she turns into a man; another long piece presents a series of dreams about having a baby (who variously has a tail or is a small cat or "wants to go back in"). Doucet's sense of humor is intimately tied to her cluttered but striking visual style: one of the book's funniest strips is a one-pager in which she imagines what it would be like to shave if she were a man, mimicking the facial contortions (and bloody nicks) of men looking into a mirror with a razor and concluding with an ear-to-ear grin as she yells, "Haaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" The more screwed-up her fantasies are, the more entertaining they get, and almost every panel is a scribbly, quirky delight. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
Doucet returns after a five-year absence in a collection of 1988-95 dream-journal stories that, often sexual, generally grotesque, aren't for the fainthearted. In them, she contends with such outlandish situations as having all her teeth fall out, coming home to find her cat bisected by guillotine, being injected with drugs by a sinister friend, and repeatedly giving birth to catlike creatures. Several involve her not-unwilling transformation into a man (in one, however, she has last-panel regrets: "Ooh--What if I miss my vagina?"). Others, such as one in which she's driven insane by her job in a copy shop, are more mundane. All display constant, underlying anxiety coupled with postfeminist insouciance. Doucet's panels, drawn in a rubbery yet dense style, are packed with loopy, off-kilter detail, and the dialogue, delivered in slightly skewed, French-inflected English, adds improbable charm. Unlike most autobiographical comics, Doucet's don't give any sense of what the artist is "really" like. Yet her feisty, resilient dream-self comes vividly to life. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

My Most Secret Desire: Lush Dreams Rendered in Art
If you were to buy only one comic novella (but who could stop at one?), it should be Julie Doucet's My Most Secret Desire.

Culled from both her memories of annihilating dreams and her fabulous comic series, Dirty Plotte, My Most Secret Desire brazenly introduces the reader into Doucet's world of oddball lovers and eccentric friends. Most importantly she unflinchingly bares all (literally and figuratively) as she recounts dreams which careen among the funny (masturbating with baked goods in outer space); the eerie (vomiting until her teeth fall out, being coerced into performing, um, services on a skeletal man's croissant); and the cute (giving birth to kitten after kitten).

Awakening to the reality of her apartment offers no solace as mundane household objects such as menacingly sharp pencils, butter knives, push pins, fish hooks, and scissors conspire to bring about the waifish heroine's demise.

Rendered predominantly in detailed black and white with the occasional jolt of full color on black (appropriate for a nightmare about returning to art school)!

Treat yourself to this superfun book!

Detached.
Julie Doucet, My Most Secret Desire (Drawn and Quarterly, 2004)

I might have appreciated this book more had I known its contents beforehand. Not the explicit, disturbing nature of them (come on, my movie collection includes most of the Guinea Pig films AND the first two Men Behind the Sun films), but the disconnectedness (this is a dream journal, not a graphic novel) and fragmented language. The disconnectedness is an easy enough thing to which to adapt, though the pieces here are, well, dreams, and therefore often have no traditional structure whatsoever. The consistent misuse of English, however, is absolutely maddening. If your English isn't all that great, not a problem: work with a translator. There are a lot of wonderful translators out there.

Amusing at times, but be warned. ** ½