French Milk

Product Information

One gets a good look into Parisian life, but also in the internal journey of finding who one is and who one is not.

Curious how that works when a free, all-expenses-paid holiday to Paris didn't make her stop whining about wanting to have sex with her boyfriend, not fitting into shoes causes a strop and the Moulin Rouge not living up to her expectations made her "depressed" - I hate when that word is trivialised by people who think their non-problems are comparable to serious mental illness. As it became clear that nothing more substantive was going to be discussed, I wondered whether the earlier rhetoric about mother/daughter relationships was added on later in the publishing process. Lucy was meh, she wasn't very likeable or engaging, all she did was moan about everything despite having lots of great opportunities.She also mentions just getting little presents from her parents for Christmas because the trip is a big deal, which also leads me to believe that her folks are footing the bill. The sketching was skillful and competent, but as a travel journal it rarely felt insightful or even introspective in any way. Knisley (French Milk, Relish) continues to own the travelogue/graphic novel genre by bringing her characteristic humor and heart to this memoir of a summer in Europe. Many of these sketches were also drawn while Knisley was on the move, so many are not as neat or clear as they could be. knisley is young, seems to know a lot of the right people (bryan lee o'malley, hope larson, etc), has a wonderful way with a brush/pen/ink (her sketch style is very reminiscent of craig thompson's carnet du voyages).

Instead of her typical thin line work, Knisley uses brushes and ink in this piece, a method that I quite enjoy. Her speech is kind of awkward and pseudo-sophisticated in a way that people in their early twenties do. We got up late and then we went to an art museum and then I drank some milk - OMG THE MILK IS SO GOOD IN PARIS - and then I ate some foie gras because I totally don't feel guilty about how they treat those geese and then we bought stuff at a market and then we ate more foie gras and cornichons and then we went to sleep. I was torn as to the value of the photographs she included; at first, I thought there was something unfair about it, but then I came upon one of her kissing a wall and realized there was no other way to capture that moment, at least, not so thoroughly. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.Neighbouring Spain, Portugal and Belgium all have similar levels but the picture varies across Europe. I decided I wanted to read through all of Lucy Knisley's books, and went back to this first one, which I had never read before. Especially considering it opens with some introduction about how the trip broadened her horizons and deepened her relationship with her mother (who she traveled with) or some such thing, and I rarely saw evidence of that on the page.

Another thing I really loved was how Lucy was able to show her angst on her soon to be graduation from college. Highs: The Parisian setting, the detail, the honesty of Lucy, the food porn and her obvious passion for museums and art. My main issue has always been that, while she often states that she's going to explore an concept and make meaningful observations, she rarely delivers. it remains to be seen if knisley will look back on this work and think "oh my god, i was such an EMBARRASSMENT!While she both introduces and concludes her book with commentary on how her trip was supposed to reflect a significant part of her journey to adulthood, her writing doesn’t engage with this topic in any depth. The photos are used sparingly, without comment, filling in gaps in her story, fleshing them out and creating what feels more like an intimate scrapbook than a memoir, albeit an accessible one. It's full of angst -- of the wondering what she'll do, where she'll go when school's over -- and it's also full of food, of travel, and of culture. Even worse is an incident on the plane home: Knisley and her mother were asked to stop watching a DVD without headphones because people were trying to sleep, and responded by having a conversation loud enough to be annoying.

And she never tells the reader what a cornichon is, nor can you tell from her sparse drawings, though her drawing of a woman's large buttocks on the final pages is not sparse - it's just plain mean. During the month and a half she spent in Paris she estimates that she ate approximately sixty croissants, more than four hundred cornichons, and a metric ton of chocolate mousse. While I understand that this is a tumultuous time period in people’s lives (being that I am only in my late twenties), it is often hard to feel sympathy for Knisley because she just doesn’t seem to realise just how many great things are happening in her life. Knisley in French Milk was still embedded in a very self-focused segment of her life, and her memoir was not one that I particularly enjoyed reading since she didn’t seem to change all that much by the end of the book.Lucy is 3 years younger than I and looks to be heavily influenced by Craig Thompson's awesome Carnet de Voyage. This book stands up, and is remarkable partly because so many of the relationships, thoughts, and themes of her later books can already be seen brewing here. The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls once told me that memoir should be universal, and I've kept that in mind ever since when I read them.