One Hundred Demons

I was assigned this book for a comics class at my university and I must say I've never read anything like it. Barry's incredibly illustrative style is so fascinating and her non-linear depiction of her life feels as though one is listening to someone share pieces of their world, rather than reading a graphic memoir. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

I bought "One Hundred Demons" as kind of a shot-in-the-dark gift for my wife. She ended up reading it all in one sitting and gave me her opinion. "This book is, like, one of the best books I've read in years! You have to read it! She even, like, gives you instructions in the back on how to paint your own demons!" Buying a good gift without being given specific instructions is something I do once every 10 years maybe. I did it TWICE this year (I also did good by buying her some thermal "dog" pajamas from Target on a whim). I ended up reading it myself -- and I thought it was an awesome book. I couldn't (and still can't) put it down either! There are a lot of nuances that are very funny. Lynda Barry does a great job conveying personality and humanism. Very colorful and fun to read. Will likely buy more of her books -- I (we) need more than just one fix.

Lynda Barry's "One! Hundred! Demons!" is just another astonishingly wonderful book in a long line of astonishingly wonderful books. Using Japanese inks and brushes, she categorizes the demons of her childhood. We see everything from resilience to hate to common scents, from magic to "girlness" to dogs to cicadas. Among the many pleasures of the book--Barry's extremely simple yet enormously evocative illustrations, the awesome ear she has for the way children speak to each other, the cheerful colors belying much of the sadness inherent in her work--is the section entitled "Magic." This regards Barry's rejection, at age thirteen, of her two-years-younger best friend. It's easy to tell that even more than thirty years later, Barry feels shame over this episode. She so deftly sketches the psyche of her thirteen-year old self that we are left alternating between complete understanding of her actions and rueful sorrow that she couldn't ignore the age difference.This is a funky, trippy book that's simultaneously a quick read and something you want to linger over the second (and third, and fourth) time you read it. Long may Lynda Barry rule!

I stayed up late into the night to read this book, frequently crying. Lynda Barry has clearly made an effort to be as honest as possible, and as a result, these stories just really ring true. This book is a rare combination of funny and sad and smart. She handles some pretty lofty themes--memory, abuse of power, family--with an insistence on staying in reality. It's a provocative book, and a pleasure to read. I'm buying copies for several of my friends.

It's Lynda Barry's first all-color book and it's beautiful, collecting the fantastic water-colored 100 Demons stories that originally appeared on ... but that's not all! The book also contains awesome collages by Lynda between the strips as well as a foreword explaining the origin of the 100 Demons idea and an afterword describing some of the materials and methods Lynda used in creating the strips.The strips (as you would expect in a work by Ms. Barry) evoke a wide range of emotions, and cover a lot of territory. Who could read "Common Scents" and NOT remember the smells of their grandmother's house or shuffle uncomfortably at the memory of failed attempts to disguise the smell of cat pee with incense? OK, maybe you never owned a cat, but you still need the book to read about the Aswang! It could save your life!

This "autobifictionalography" collects Barry's brilliant salon.com sketches of the demons we all face in our lives. It is exactly that universality that makes for magical reading. The intense specificity of childhood's horrors made me feel like I was reading my own life, not Barry's. Barry's artistry is in telling and illustrating these stories with incredible humor as well as unlimited heart. Particularly haunting of the eighteen stories are the lost friendship in "Magic" and "Resilience" which gives the lie to adult fantsies of childhood innocence. It's increasingly clear that Lynda Barry is our finest writer of the emotional lives of damaged children. She gives voice to kids that few people ever listened to. Having been one of those kids, it's an amazing feeling to realize that you are understood and you were not alone.