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Title details for Why Don't You Love Me by Paul B. Rainey - Available

Why Don't You Love Me

by Paul B. Rainey
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
A couple struggles through their unhappy marriage in this dark science-fiction comedy Claire and Mark are in the doldrums of an unhappy marriage. She doesn't get out of her bathrobe and chain-smokes while slumped on the couch. Mark has lost track of the days and can't get the kids to school on time. They've lost interest in family and have pizza and Chinese food delivered every night. Mark sleeps on the couch and has trouble remembering his son's name. He feels like a fraud at work but somehow succeeds. Claire stalks an ex-boyfriend. How could he have left her to this life? Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn't they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: This is not the life they chose. Why Don't You Love Me? is a pitch-black comedy about marriage, alcoholism, depression, and mourning lost opportunities. Paul B. Rainey has created a hilariously terrifying alternate reality where confusion and pain might lead people to make bad choices but might also eventually led to freedom . . . maybe.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 24, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781770466852

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 5, 2022
      A woefully mismatched couple puts themselves, their children, and everyone they know through the wringer in this sly dark comedy with an eerie sci-fi twist from Rainey (There’s No Time Like the Present). In a kind of British suburban Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, married couple Claire and Mark try to outdo each other in misery. Only instead of out-and-out combat, their dysfunction plays out as quietly burnt-out surrender. Ignoring their two children so completely they cannot even agree on their names, they drag through the days. Claire is depressed in a drunkenly anesthetized state of quasi-trauma, sniping back and forth with confused, passive-aggressive Mark, who on returning to work from mental health leave cannot figure out what his job used to be. Unemployment, divorce, and infidelity loom in what appears a mundane tragedy. Their domestic squabbles cycle and repeat to a nearly unbearable degree before a stunning plot twist kicks the narrative into a different register, with revelations full of strangeness and terror. Presented in quick and light but confident black-and-white strokes, the artistic simplicity belies an increasingly complex concept. This one’s for curious indie-comics readers who enjoy being surprised.

    • Booklist

      August 18, 2023
      The parents are Claire and Mark; their young children, Charley and Sally. Their utterly dysfunctional family is fast approaching collapse. Claire rarely sheds her bathrobe, sends Charley out with a note to buy cigarettes on her behalf (with his savings), and drinks herself into oblivion most nights. Mark sleeps on the couch, can never remember Charley's name, and is running out of sick leave to nominally care for his debilitated household. What seems like another devolving family drama literally blanks out into empty panels about halfway through, resuming to show Mark on the verge of collapse in a barber shop, followed by Claire who's just coming to after falling in her IT support office. What might be going on? Get ready: British cartoonist Rainey is about to implode your world. His mostly 11-panel, black-and-white, two-page episodes belie an exacting regularity antithetical to what's happening across the pages. The unsuspecting reader's eventual realization of Rainey's oh-so clever authorial manipulation is just too delightful to spoil. For maximum satisfaction, audiences need to personally discover Rainey's graphic ruses--unfiltered and unbiased.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read

subjects

Languages

  • English

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