Youth Services Book Review gives 5 stars to My Perfect Life by Lynda Barry

What did you like about the book? Coming of age in the 1970’s is brought to life with gritty clarity in Barry’s latest retrospective collection. Introduced on the endpapers by her little sister Marly, Maybonne is a rising high schooler in the deepest abyss of hormonal and emotional change. Her “incredible life” includes poetic thoughts, prayers, existential questions, letters and diary entries, as well as some frightening adventures. Maybonne’s emerging awareness of the world is relatable, and at times quite funny . The soundtrack is music from Bread and Sly and the Family Stone, and the issues are pollution, “the plastic world,” and trying to define love (“Love can be cruddy.”) Maybonne often “rides on a bummer” as first love and its repercussions ratchet her emotions are up and down. Black and white pen and ink with messy crosshatching shows the two freckled girls and their friends in all their chaotic splendor, and the episodic chapters are mainly in two-page, four panel spreads. These comics from 1988-1990 are packaged in an attractive oblong shape, like several of Barry’s other books.

What a trip back to middle school this read was, with the long phone calls, the cord stretching to the bedroom for privacy, and the endless notes passed to friends. In Maybonne’s world, adults are deeply flawed and ugly, which is reflected in the caricatures – alcoholism, mental illness, joblessness and poverty are written on their faces. I felt that this collection was the most satisfying of Barry’s collections, in that the chapters coalesce into a story of one year of the sisters’ life.

Anything you didn’t like about it? No

To whom would you recommend this book? For ages 16 & up, readers of humorous, realistic, semi-autobiographical fiction.