The Freddie Stories: With the Great Marlys! and Sister Maybonne

by Lynda Barry

Book Overview

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF TROUBLED ADOLESCENTS FROM BARRY'S ACCLAIMED COMIC The Freddie Stories traces a year in the life of Freddie, the youngest member of the dysfunctional Mullen family. These... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570611068
• ISBN13: 9781570611063
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books
• Length: 123 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 9.1" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Recognize greatness in whatever form it takes

Lynda Barry is one of this nation's great writers. Many readers won't see her dazzling brilliance because they are distracted by her cluttered, sometimes messy cartooning. The pictures and words work together though, as does her unbreaking four-panel format, to create not just a fine comic, or a good book, but high literature and great art.Freddie is a boy to whom, to put it bluntly, terrible things happen. In this wrenching novel he is beaten, abused, humiliated and ignored. At the depth of his wretched misery he drifts from his own body, and spends some time watching people watching the boy who looks just like him. Only his sister, Marlys sees that something is not right, and with the help of love, an amazing entity and a secret language, struggles to bring him back. This amazing story is filled with monsters and gods, magic, dreams, and nightmarish horrors. It's villians are horrible; psychotic teens, mad, bullying classmates and emotionally twisted Moms. It's heroes -- Marlys, Spaz-Eyes Gigi, and Freddie himself -- are incredible.Don't be put off by scribbled, cluttered panels, or the cartoon nature itself: This is one of the greatest novels I have read, and look forward to reading it again and again.

Marlys sez Hi, Freddie sez Right on!

Remember how the tv show 'the wonder years' would always give you that feeling that your heart was about to break into a million pieces and make you die of sadness? This book has that same amazingly beautiful feel to it.Lynda Barry is my punk rock dream come true, she should have her own national holiday...hmmmm.Ok, this book makes me think so much of my younger years, as Freddie makes his way thru this confusing world. He's shy and arty, and has a pencant for calling himself 'Fag'. It makes you wish that he'd burst thru his cartoon world pannel and liberate Peppermint Patty and Velma from their str8 boy dominated confines (and who knows, he may do just that...).Anyway, this book isn't a book for kids per sey but details how I remember feeling growing up. Freddies only true friend being his sister Marlys, His mother who is a...i cant even think of a nice word...and his older sister Maybonne who is hooked on drugs and depressed...and that only scrapes the trauma that is delt with in this book of genius.I can't possibly tell you how amazing this book is...You really have to see it for yourself...

Lynda "why-not-just-call-her-Shakespeare?" Barry

Thank you, Lynda, for this whole book just about Freddie. Ever since I read about him in Ernie Pook's Comeek, spazzing out by the monkey bars with Spaz Eyes Gigi, I wished I could read more. As much as I love Marlys and Maybonne, I was glad that Freddie was such a wonderfully different character. The bits of light that appear in his frightening univers only serve to show how awful the rest of everything is. The exception to this--the burning stroke of genius in all of Barry's books about this family--is his relationship with Marlys. When he comes out of his burning-head phase, hers is the first normal face he sees. There's a reason for this: she keeps him not (too) crazy, and alive. Read this book. Lynda Barry is awesome. No one is better at putting you directly inside a character. She isn't going for quick laughs. She's going for real life. And she hits it, dead on, time and time again.

Move over, Esther Greenwood! Here comes Freddie.

Lynda Barry's latest collection of comics is about a character we've met only briefly in her past books. Freddie is a gay (or, in his own words, El Fagatastico) adolescent who lives through a couple of truly unspeakable horrors. He witnesses death and abandonment, surrounded by hateful cousins, controlling friends, his drugged-out sister Maybonne (who, with any luck, will be the star of another book of her own sometime soon) and an unloving mother. His only ally is one of my favorite Lynda Barry characters, his gifted sister Marlys. These stories are as engaging and moving as any I've ever read. It's a cliche, but I have to say it: I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me.I first picked up a Lynda Barry book back in 1988, when I was a senior in high school. I didn't quite understand the comics, but they fascinated me. As I grew older I started to understand her more and more, and now I can honestly say that nobody else can write characters with whom I can identify quite like Ms. Barry. Keep churning them out, Lynda!

Something of a revelation

I grew up queer, gifted and --um-- white trash, in a brutal world with little hope and no heroes. In "The Freddie Stories" Lynda Barry creates a character as true to that experience as any I have read, and shows that kids without heroes must become heroes... and Freddie/Skreddie is a true hero. Just as Lynda Barry re-forms the arts of narrative and cartooning to the demands of her unique and eloquent talents, her queer, gifted, white-trash Freddie reshapes his own world -- through a harrowing series of agonies -- into a place where cast-away kids become creatures of miracles. Not since "Bastard out of Carolina" has a writer approached this shadow world with Barry's insight, brilliance and compassion. Just as Holden Caulfield still speaks for disaffected youth, Freddie deserves to endure as a spokesman-hero for this particular tribe of disenfranchised of children. Note: the back cover is worth the price of the book.