BOOK REVIEW | SHEETS | BRENNA THUMMLER

 BOOK REVIEW | SHEETS | BRENNA THUMMLER

 

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Marjorie Glatt feels like a ghost. A practical thirteen-year-old in charge of the family laundry business, her daily routine features unforgiving customers, unbearable P.E. classes, and the fastidious Mr. Saubertuck who is committed to destroying everything she's worked for.

Wendell is a ghost. A boy who lost his life much too young, his daily routine features ineffective death therapy, a sheet-dependent identity, and a dangerous need to seek purpose in the forbidden human world.

When their worlds collide, Marjorie is confronted by unexplainable disasters as Wendell transforms Glatt's Laundry into his midnight playground, appearing as a mere sheet during the day. While Wendell attempts to create a new afterlife for himself, he unknowingly sabotages the life that Marjorie is struggling to maintain.

Sheets illustrates the determination of a young girl to fight, even when all parts of her world seem to be conspiring against her. It proves that second chances are possible whether life feels over or life is over. But above all, it is a story of the forgiveness and unlikely friendship that can only transpire inside a haunted laundromat.

REVIEW

Sheets tells the story of a young teenage girl, Marjorie Glatt and her ghost friend Wendell.

After the death of her mother, Marjorie lives an almost invisible life existing from one day to the next whilst juggling running the family business, caring for her brother and her grief stricken father who has retreated from life.

In the midst of this she has to deal with her own grief, the constant barrage of the most odious customers that you have ever seen and the emotional assault by a local businessman who is trying to buy their laundrette due to its prime location for his yoga retreat.

Meanwhile Wendell is a ghost who is having a problem dealing with his life as a ghost. He has recently entered the ghost world, got his sheet and is trying to adapt to his life in ghost town. However, this is going from bad to worse so he decides that the best course of action is to go awol and visit the human world.

Sheets tells the dual stories of Marjorie and Wendell and how they meet.

Let me tell you this one was a rare one for me as it proper gut punched me in the feels. Everything about this book is utterly gorgeous, from the writing to the art.

The story has so much that drags you in. Marjorie is such a sad character that has so much put on her. She is isolated at school. She is having to keep her home and her mother’s business whilst her father has retreated into his own grief and is leaving the children to bring up themselves.. Not only that she has to deal with the worst set of customers that I have ever met. How this girl keeps going I don’t know.

Then there is Wendell. He covers up the trauma he has experienced with tall tales and exaggeration. He makes a mess of things constantly even though his heart is in the right place.

Now let’s get to Brenna Thummler’s art. It is just so sumptuous. At times her illustrations remind me of Judith Kerr, especially when she is drawing people. As well as that, her colour palette is so distinctive, I don’t think I have seen anything like it. She uses a mixture of pinks, blues, greens and oranges that gives it so much vibrancy, and when she moves to the ghost world there is a distinctive monochromatic green hue that conveys how dull and boring the afterlife is.

This has got to be one of my favourite books of the year and is one of my top comics of all time.