Blood of the virgin

by Sammy Harkham

Paper Book, 2023

Status

Available

Call number

741.5/973

Collection

Publication

New York, NY : Pantheon Books, 2023.

Description

"After fourteen years in the making, renowned and beloved graphic novelist Sammy Harkham finally delivers his epic story of artistic ambition, the heartbreak that it can bring, and what it means to be human Set in and around 1971 in Los Angeles, Blood of the Virgin follows an immigrant film editor named Seymour who is desperate to make his own movies. But without money or clout, he has no choice but to spend his days slumming it for the worst and most exploitative production company in town. When Seymour is given the chance to make a film of his own, his unbending principles and relentless drive violently clash with an industry that rewards everything but principles and drive. As Seymour's blind ambition pushes the movie along, his home life grows increasingly fraught. Blood of the Virgin uses the film's production as a means to spiral out in time and space to create an epic novel that explores the intersection of parenthood, 20th-century America, sex, the immigrant experience, and the era of grindhouse movies. Like a kaleidoscope, Blood of the Virgin shifts and evolves with each frame, allowing the reader to zoom out and see that at its core, this book is about the making of a man"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LibrarianRyan
This was an almost automatic DNF. I did read the description telling me it was about a man writing about his life trying to become a film Director. The illustrations have a 70s feel to them which is when I believe this takes place, but right off the bat in the margins of the page you have porn
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illustrations. Then you have the characters in the bathroom having this conversation and just it was an immediate turn off for me. I have no desire to turn any more pages to read anything more of this book than the first page. Somebody will like it, just not me.
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LibraryThing member villemezbrown
Pathetic and shitty people live out their pathetic and shitty lives working for a B movie studio in the 1970s making a slapdash horror film. The most pathetic is a film editor named Seymour who has aspirations of writing and directing his own film but will compromise to get ahead at almost every
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opportunity. Mostly though, he's doing the midlife crisis thing, getting drunk and high, butting heads with his wife and sleeping around on her.

The book has a couple of big digressions, first to the 1910s with some early filmmakers who play no role in the rest of the story and then to the 1940s to give a Holocaust backstory to a secondary character who also has minimal impact in the main tale. They're not bad stories on their own, but just fill like filler here, dragging out this already overlong and tedious graphic novel.

I had passed up on reading this book previously but gave it a go because it made Publisher Weekly's list of best graphic novels of 2023. I should have stuck with my gut reaction.
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Language

Original publication date

2023

Physical description

295 p.; 26 cm

ISBN

9780593316696

Library's rating

Pages

295
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