Off Season

Off Season

<p><b>Rage. Depression. Divorce. Politics. Love. A visceral story that you can see, taste, and feel.</b></p><p>How could this happen? The question of 2016 becomes deeply personal in James Sturm’s riveting graphic novel <i>Off Season</i>, which charts one couple’s divisive separation during Bernie Sanders’s loss to Hillary Clinton, Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, and the disorienting months that followed. </p><p>We see a father navigating life as a single parent and coping with the disintegration of a life-defining relationship. Amid the upheaval lie tender moments with his kids―a sleeping child being carried in from the car, Christmas-morning anticipation, a late-night cookie after a temper tantrum―and fallible humans drenched in palpable feelings of grief, rage, loss, and overwhelming love. Using anthropomorphized characters as a tactic for tempering an otherwise emotionally fraught situation, <i>Off Season</i> is unaffected and raw, steeped in the specificity of its time while speaking to a larger cultural moment.</p><p>A truly human experience, <i>Off Season</i> displays Sturm’s masterful pacing and storytelling combined with conscious and confident growth as the celebrated cartoonist and educator moves away from historical fiction to deliver this long-form narrative set in contemporary times. Originally serialized on <i>Slate</i>, this expanded edition turns timely vignettes into a timeless, deeply affecting account of one family and their off season.</p>