Synopsis
Two girls in a small town in the USA kill time together as they try to get through their days at school.
They watch videos, share earbuds as they play each other songs and exchange their stories. In the process they form a deep connection and an unexpected relationship begins to develop.
In her follow up to the critically acclaimed The End of Summer, Tillie Walden tells the story of a small love that can make you feel like the biggest thing around, and how it’s possible to find another person who understands you when you thought no-one could.
From: Avery Hill Publishing
Notes on This Title
While homophobia is not depicted on the page, one girl’s words and actions imply internalized homophobia/a reaction to societal homophobia.
Awards
2016 Eisner Award Nominee for Best Single Issue/One-Shot
Reviews
“But putting aside technique and structure, memorable and impressive as they assuredly are, it’s the brittle humanity of I Love this Part that makes the deepest impression. As something of value slowly begins to ebb away, Walden reveals the fragility of first love in all its painful, crushing immediacy. It’s so subtly underplayed in presentation and yet simultaneously so overwhelmingly profound in delivery. Here we have 60-ish pages of storytelling where we actually learn very little about our subjects and yet we come away feeling we know everything about them, so invested are we in them by book’s end.” (Source: Broken Frontier)
“The girls’ story is told in single-panel pages that include little to no dialogue at all. Some dialogue is never even spoken, only exchanged via text message, as indicated by illustrated messenger chat bubbles. The two girls are never named, nor aged—we as readers can, however, determine that they are on the cusp of entering their tumultuous teenage years, perhaps twelve or thirteen. In the scheme of things, these girls are young—invisible—and if we felt particularly cruel (or, perhaps, honest), we might say they are insignificant. But Walden positions them as anything but. Placed alongside and often dwarfing mountains, skyscrapers, and vast landscapes, the girls and their developing feelings for one another are the undeniable focus. The human figures contrasting.” (Source: wildness)
Interviews
Vulture: “Tillie Walden on the Queer Characters and Emotional Turmoil of Her New Comic, I Love This Part”