Shortcomings

A New York Times Notable book! Now a major motion picture directed by Randall Park!

Ben Tanaka has problems. In addition to being rampantly critical, sarcastic, and insensitive, his long–term relationship is awash in turmoil. His girlfriend, Miko Hayashi, suspects that Ben has an addiction to porn and a wandering eye – more to the point, it’s wandering in the direction of white women. Plus his best friend Alice Kim is too busy kissing all the women at Mills College to listen to Ben’s endless complaints.

Adrian Tomine’s funny, incisive comic about Asian-American sexuality pits California against New York, devotion against desire, and trust against truth. In 2023, Shortcomings was adapted into a major motion picture with a screenplay written by the cartoonist. It debuted at Sundance and appeared at the Tribeca Festival, both to great acclaim, and is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

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“Meticulously observed…The dialogue is pitch–perfect and succinct. [Tomine is] daring in his restraint.”— The New York Times Book Review

“Tomine’s genius is to strip his medium of every possible type of grandiosity or indulgence, and the result is that life itself floods in. His mise–en–scène rivals Eric Rohmer’s in its gentle precision, and his mastery of narrative time suggests Alice Munro. Shortcomings, as near as he’d get to a grand statement, is as deceptively simple and perfect as a comic book gets.”— Jonathan Lethem

“Few books have dealt with racial and sexual politics—and, specifically, Asian American masculinity—as deftly as Shortcomings.”—Time

“Compelling and laugh-out-loud hilarious.”—The Washington Post

“Shortcomings is the best account ever of Asian American male angst (with some satirical takes on Asian American culture, too). Tomine is the Chekhov of comics, a master of the story form, done in pictures.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Exploring race, adulthood, and ambition with exquisitely tuned humor and poignancy, Shortcomings is a graphic narrative as piercingly realistic as any prose fiction.”— Entertainment Weekly

“One of the most gifted graphic novelists of our time.”—Wired

“Graphic novels are rarely this disquieting and subtle.”— The Boston Globe

“It’s a fair bet that Shortcomings will only further secure [Tomine’s] title as the ‘most masterful’ and ‘most critically–acclaimed’ comics writer of his generation.”— The Believer

“Graphic literature’s most gifted realist…Fiercely honest.”— St. Louis Post—Dispatch