January 1, 2024
Vivid pictures from a gay life. In an honest, often self-deprecating coming-of-age graphic memoir, Canadian cartoonist and illustrator Vellekoop recounts growing up gay in 1970s Toronto, where his family was a member of the conservative Christian Reformed Church, which viewed homosexuality as a sin. As a young boy, Vellekoop was passionately in love with his mother, treasuring their outings to department stores and lunches and helping her in the beauty salon she ran in the basement. He feared his father, who was given to unpredictable rages; surprising to the young Maurice, his father took him to see Fantasia, which incited an obsession with all things Disney. The author recalls his love of 1960s TV sitcoms, Barbie dolls, and Carol Burnett. He preferred watching TV to doing anything else; like his siblings, he was bad at sports. He wasn't much of a reader, either, but when his mother introduced him to C.S. Lewis, he became enraptured by the Narnia books. Vellekoop structures his memoir in short chapters, each focused on a particular period in his life: teenage angst; finding a welcoming cohort in art school; career highs and lows; and many episodes of "fumbled romance." Throughout, he pictures himself with two competing angels on his shoulders: one steering him to be good, kind, and compassionate; the other, cynical and bitter, intensifying his feelings of darkness. In 1995, seeing himself as a "smart, urban homosexual" who had outgrown Toronto, he moved to Manhattan. Although he had an agent and was gaining attention for his work--Vogue, for example, sent him to cover Paris couture--his personal life was difficult. He drank too much, fell into recurring depressions, and lost friends to AIDS. When he finally decided to get therapy, he struggled to find someone who could help him--and, after finally succeeding, he turned his life around. A raw, revealing chronicle.
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Starred review from February 1, 2024
Both visual feast and celebrity tell-almost-all, Vellekoop's memoir is a magnificent, magnified bildungsroman centering his personal and artistic development. Born in a Toronto suburb to Dutch immigrant parents, Vellekoop was the youngest of four children in a strict Christian family. His distant, often angry father was overshadowed by his devoted mother: "Once upon a time my Mum and I were so in love it was almost like we were one seamless being." Barbies, Disney, TV, and Narnia provided both education and escape. Bullying was constant in school, but he found empathic souls in art college, forming significant, lifelong relationships. Coming out as gay was fraught with concern over his parents' reactions, but he chose to live openly. Missing, however, is meaningful romance, as he repeatedly chases elusive men. Depression is never far off, until he finds an engaging therapist who pushes him to confront his past and determine his present (and future). All the while, he manages to become one of the most in-demand illustrators for major brands and publications. Vellekoop deftly turns his panels into an intimate barometer, reflecting mood in muted single-color washes, adding saturated highlights for breakdowns and breakthroughs, deploying spectacular prismatic hues to celebrate the most transformative moments. The result is an effusive, unguarded reveal of family, friendship, healing--and finally finding wondrous true love.
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