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Self-Esteem and the End of the World

Luke Healy

Funny, moving, expansive and ambitious graphic novel from the acclaimed author of The Con Artists and Americana.

23 in stock

£20£18
Format
Hardback
ISBN
9780571375608
Date Published
23.05.2024
Delivery
All orders are sent via Royal Mail and are tracked: choose from standard or premium delivery.
Summary

‘Hilarious … there’s no one else quite like him working today.’
RACHEL COOKE, Observer Graphic Novel of the month

‘Full of unexpected laughs; at once both absurd and sincere.’
SOPHIE YANOW, author of
The Contradictions

A joy to read.
RAFEL FRUMKIN, author of
Confidence

The funniest, most moving and expansive graphic novel yet from the acclaimed author of The Con Artists and Americana.

‘Who is Luke Healy?’

For over ten years, a graphic novelist called Luke Healy has invested all of his self-esteem into his career. Then, almost overnight, just as his brother is getting married, both seem to vanish.

Spiralling and lacking purpose, he searches for identity – in self-help books, replacement jobs and human connection – and visits cheesy British hotels and abandoned Greek islands.

Set against the backdrop of a dangerously changing global climate, with melting ice-caps and flooding cities, Self-Esteem and the End of the World spans two decades of tragicomic self-discovery until the unlikely prospect of a Hollywood revival of Luke’s work comes into view – but what might be the cost?

‘One of the finest cartoonists working today.’ James Sturm

Critic Reviews

Healy's book is hilarious [...] there's no one else quite like him working today, a cartoonist who makes high art of our despicable complacency, our quotidian and horribly paralysing derangements.

Rachel Cooke, Observer Graphic Novel of the month
Critic Reviews

A wry and introspective examination of the fustercluck that has become the totality of All Human Endeavour.

Comics Reviews
Critic Reviews

Full of unexpected laughs; at once both absurd and sincere.

Sophie Yanow, author of The Contradictions
Critic Reviews

Luke Healy stumbles through the elegantly drawn frames of Self-Esteem and the End of the World like a gay millennial Harvey Pekar, asking himself the questions currently dogging an entire generation: How can we save the Earth? How can we survive late-stage capitalism? And most importantly: How can we love ourselves?

What makes Healy such a joy to read is his canny awareness that these questions aren’t easily answered through pithy self-help psychobabble, nor even through finally getting all the things we want. The answers are lived, not spoken, and look more like having a heart-to-heart with your mam at a crime scene or caring for an AI whale with a glitching fin: in other words, the messy, confounding, lovely business of being human in extraordinary times.

Rafel Frumkin, author of Confidence
LukeHealy

Luke Healy was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, where he also received a BA in Journalism. He has an MFA in Cartooning from the Centre for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, USA. His work has been exhibited in the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art in Manhattan and his previous work, Americana, was a Guardian Best Book of 2019.

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LukeHealy
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