Posy Simmonds, Britain’s best-loved cartoonist and the author of Gemma Bovery, has now created the irresistible Tamara Drewe, a graphic novel that delightfully skewers modern mores and manners with great wit and understanding for the foibles of humanity.
Loosely inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, Tamara Drewe follows a year at Stonefield, a bucolic writer’s retreat run by Beth and Nicholas Hardiman, where Dr. Glen Larson, an American professor and struggling novelist, is staying. The ambitious young Tamara Drewe, mourning the loss of her mother, has returned to her family home nearby. A bookish girl not so long ago, Tamara is now a gossipy columnist at a London paper and undeniably sexy. She quickly has every man in the vicinity—Glen, Nicholas, and the handyman, Andy—falling at her feet, while teenage best friends Casey and Jody become infatuated with Tamara and her ex-rock-star fiancé, Ben. Meanwhile, long-suffering Beth sees to the needs of the writers while managing the farm, the household, and the many affairs of her husband, a best-selling detective novelist.
Perhaps even more satisfying than your favorite nineteenth-century novel, with its fine, expressive drawings, deft storytelling, and nods to both the past and the present, yet unlike anything that has come before, Tamara Drewe is that rare graphic novel for grownups.