Awards

• Winner of Alex Awards 2019

Overview

David Small’s long-awaited graphic novel is a savage portrayal of male adolescence gone awry like no other work of recent fiction or film. Wildly kaleidoscopic and furiously cinematic, Home After Dark is a literary tour-de-force that renders the brutality of adolescence in the so-called nostalgic 1950s, evoking such classics as The Lord of the Flies. Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt, abandoned by his mother, follows his father to sun-splashed California in search of a dream. Suddenly forced to fend for himself, Russell struggles to survive in Marshfield, a dilapidated town haunted by a sadistic animal killer and a ring of malicious boys who bully Russell for being “queer.” Rescued from his booze-swilling father by Wen and Jian Mah, a Chinese immigrant couple who long for a child, Russell betrays their generosity by running away with their restaurant’s proceeds. Told almost entirely through thousands of spliced images, once again “employ[ing] angled shots and silent montages worthy of Alfred Hitchcock” (Washington Post, on Stitches), Home After Dark becomes a new form of literature in this shocking graphic interpretation of cinema verité.

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9780871403155

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Reviews

A master graphic storyteller who has certainly captured male adolescence in 1950s America. Having to think about dodging high school bullies every day sure resonated with me! And Russell's sexual predicament was handled in a very original way. -- Robert Crumb, author of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb Home After Dark is incredibly moving. David Small is among the most masterful storytellers alive today. -- Gene Yang, author of Boxers and Saints I thought David Small's Stitches was as good as a graphic novel could get, and I was right. Home After Dark is not a novel, whatever the publisher chooses to call it. It is a poem-in-pictures, evocative and heart breaking and simple and pure. And I am not sure I will ever recover from it. Think of Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye joined as one, yet even more painfully honest. This a haunting work of unfolding surprise. Few words, cinematic pictures, dazzling art. -- Jules Feiffer, author of the best-selling Kill My Mother Trilogy As an adolescent, when I read Conroy's Stop Time, or Weesner's The Car Thief, or Wolff's This Boy's Life, the prose drew rich images of youth before my eyes, and defined me. David Small, in his sparsely written graphic novel, Home After Dark, has ingeniously created the reverse sensation. The silence of his masterful drawings has put words in my mouth-words that recapture the inchoate chaos of youth. -- Jack Gantos, winner of the Newbery Award and author of Hole in My Life David Small's extraordinary new graphic novel, Home After Dark, is the story of Russell, a teenaged boy abandoned first by his mother and then by his father. It's about Russell's adolescence but also everyone's: learning who you can and can't trust, the complexities of relationships with your peers, and figuring out who you are and the kind of person you want to be. Russell's struggle to survive and not be crushed by the indifference or cruelty of the world drew me in. The drawings are gorgeous and expressive-Small's facial expressions alone filled me with awe. A wonderful book and a great follow-up to Stitches. -- Roz Chast, The New Yorker cartoonist

A master graphic storyteller who has certainly captured male adolescence in 1950s America. Having to think about dodging high school bullies every day sure resonated with me! And Russell's sexual predicament was handled in a very original way. -- Robert Crumb, author of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

A master graphic storyteller who has certainly captured male adolescence in 1950s America. Having to think about dodging high school bullies every day sure resonated with me! And Russell's sexual predicament was handled in a very original way.--Robert Crumb, author of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

This is not a California - or a childhood - that anyone in their right mind would ever dream of... This book is utterly superb. Only a person with no feelings at all could fail to buy it. -- Strong Words A master graphic storyteller who has certainly captured male adolescence in 1950s America. Having to think about dodging high school bullies every day sure resonated with me! And Russell's sexual predicament was handled in a very original way. -- Robert Crumb, author of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

... Home After Dark is well crafted. Small is a talented cartoonist and the opening sequence particularly impressive as Russell stares at his reflection in a Christmas bauble, trying to recognise himself. And the dream sequence in which his desire for Kurt breaks through is as clever as it is truthful. -- The Scotsman This is not a California - or a childhood - that anyone in their right mind would ever dream of... This book is utterly superb. Only a person with no feelings at all could fail to buy it. -- Strong Words A master graphic storyteller who has certainly captured male adolescence in 1950s America. Having to think about dodging high school bullies every day sure resonated with me! And Russell's sexual predicament was handled in a very original way. -- Robert Crumb, author of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

Author Information

David Small, author of the #1 New York Times best-selling Stitches, is the recipient of the Caldecott Medal, the Christopher Medal, and the E. B. White Award. He and his wife, the writer Sarah Stewart, live in Michigan.

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