I got this out of the library on a whim, as I was passing, because I liked the cover and I haven’t read any new graphic novels recently. Shortcomings is about a guy called Ben Tanaka and the breakdown of (primarily) his relationship with his community activist girlfriend Miko. I found it hard to like for two reasons:
1. I do not like alienated protagonists. I just don’t. I wanted to take Holden Caulfield and feed him to hungry lions. So I didn’t like Ben, and I didn’t want to read about him, because he was completely unpleasant.
2. And this sounds stupid, but here it is. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I had liked the protagonist, or really any of the characters. There’s this scene in To Kill a Mockingbird where the teacher is reading a story to the kids, and it doesn’t make any sense to them, because they live in a certain way, and the story is totally outside their context. And I sort of felt like that with this. In addition to not liking anybody, I also didn’t identify with them, because their world is so not mine.
Hm. This is a very close-minded-sounding review. Oh well.