Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel: A Graphic Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

Ulinich turns her sharp eye toward the strange, sometimes unmooring world of grown-up' dating. After fifteen years of marriage, 37 year old Lena Lena embarks on a string of online dates and receives a brutally eye-opening education in love, sex, and loss while raising her two teenage daughters. With references to Bernard Malamud and Chekhov along the way, this is a smart, funny story told beautifully through Ulinich's text and drawings.'

Reviews

Praise for Lena Finkles Magic Barrel

Lena Finkles Magic Barrel transcends its influences so thoroughly it creates a form, a language, all its own. . . . The simplest way to describe it is to say that its about Lenas efforts to reconcile herself to sex and love (through OkCupid, among other contemporary intercessions), but that doesnt do justice to the complexity of what Ulinich has in mind. Rather, Lena Finkles Magic Barrel works as something of a confessional, a series of notebooks that excavate its protagonists life and psyche from the inside. . . . This is the power of the graphic novel, that it not only tells but also shows us, that by integrating images into the narrative, it draws us into Lenas experience with the force of memory. Ulinich meansnot unlike Pekar in American Splendor or Karl Ove Knausgaard in My Struggleto set aside literature with a capital L (whatever that is) in favor of the epic textures of the day-to-day.
David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

An engrossing graphic novel about the vicissitudes of love, family, immigration, and art . . . Its intricate layering of memory, speech, and time exemplifies the sophistication and confidence with which Ulinich, a novelist who trained as a visual artist, approaches comics. . . . Her book can stand beside the work of other writers whove immigrated from the former Soviet UnionGary Shteyngart, David Bezmozgis, and Keith Gessen. . . . She leaves us, her readers, with an unmistakable sense of having encountered a rare, indeed magical, talent.
Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review

Relentlessly in search of a self, Lena Finkle is armed with an OkCupid account, an irrepressible inner voice rendered as a miniature Lena, and a penchant for quickly reducing others to bit players in her one-woman show. Ulinichs subjectof sex leading to a womans understanding of herself rather than a perfect unionshouldnt be noteworthy at this point in pop culture. But somehow it still is. . . . Pitched toward the same pop culture consumers who are drawn into the best serial shows, Lena Finkles Magic Barrel is a fast read but not a dumb one, and, like good television, the visual information is working both to reinforce, and to offer a different take on, the language.
The New York Times

A bold new graphic novel . . . Lenas online-dating match-ups range from promising to disastrous, exposing the sexy sensibility and bookish panache of her darkly delightful Russian-American soul.
Elle

A very personal (and universal) book about romance and a breakup. . . . Its smart, and its wise in a clean-cut journalistic way, and its incredibly, incredibly funnyand the painting is beautiful.
Slate

Splendid . . . Ulinich packs Lena Finkles Magic Barrel with wit, making the most of the absurdities and indignities of online dating. To that, she adds insight into the immigrant experience and startling descriptions of lovesickness that comes from suffering it for the first time at a relatively late age. For its richness and depth, Lena Finkles Magic Barrel belongs alongside Marjane Satrapis Persepolis and Alison Bechdels Fun Home. . . . Books such as thisbeautifully conceived, smartly told, imaginatively illustratedare gifts. Serious readers who havent ventured into visual storytelling should do themselves a favor. Try this one.
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Anya Ulinichs semi-autobiographical work kept me guessing about Finkles fatewill this Russian-American divorce overcome her insecurities, her passive-aggressive mother, and a rogues gallery of Mr. Wrongs to revive her romantic mojo . . . Her writing is so fine-edged that Magic Barrel effortlessly balances its poignant and humorous episodes.
The San Diego Union-Tribune

I really enjoyed Lena Finkles Magic Barrel, which I read in one sitting. . . . Its wonderfully evocative and honest and teaches you things about life that only its author knows.
Eric Alterman, TheNation.com

An honest and absorbing tragicomedy about love, sex, and everything that goes with them. . . . The result is an affecting portrait of how we become who we are and how we try desperately to be who we want.
Publishers Weekly

An entertaining intellect . . . Ulinich follows her debut with a graphic novel chronicling a young immigrant writers adventures through family, friendship, and sex. Its fitting that Ulinichs protagonist shares a first name with the creator of Girls. . . . The book shares terrain with the Dunham verse, being the story of a creative young womans emotional fallout from sexual exploits in neobohemia. . . . engagingly expressed as short, comic striplike vignettes.
Kirkus Reviews

Funny, painful, outrageous . . . Anya Ulinich is the David Sedaris of Russian-American cartoonists.
Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Little Failure

Intelligent, sincere, and painfully funny, Lena Finkles Magic Barrel is the divorced womens Maus.
Etgar Keret, author of The Nimrod Flipout and Suddenly, A Knock on the Door

Fun, lively, dirty, honest, outrageous, and deep.
Jami Attenberg, author of The Melting Season and The Middlesteins

This book will make you laugh so hard youll get stares from strangers. In crisp, mordant prose, Anya Ulinich lampoons bohemian Brooklyn parents, bad aspiring writers, and elusive emo boys. But make no mistake: she is deadly serious on female desire and her ultimate subject, the search for selfhood. Lena Finkle will stay with you long after her journey ends.
Amy Sohn, author of The Actress and Prospect Park West

Hilarious and heartbreaking in exactly equal measure. Anya Ulinichs uncompromising artistic vision is glorious, unique, and rare.
Emily Gould, author of And the Heart Says Whatever and Friendship

Author Bio

Anya Ulinich is the critically acclaimed author of Petropolis, which was awarded the Goldberg Prize, named a best book of the year by The Christian Science Monitor and The Village Voice, and translated into ten languages. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, n+1, and Zoetrope- All-Story, and she has taught at New York University and Gotham Writers' Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.