Patchwork:A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen

A treasure trove of a book

I’m an Austen fan who loved Kate Evans’s Red Rosa, so I’m basically the target audience here. Particularly, I’m excited to see how Austen’s patchwork quilt is handled as a storytelling device, and what that means for the book’s artwork, panel to panel. It’s so cool when narrative and form meet.

Inspired by a quilt Austen made, [Kate Evans] pieces together the story of her life…The author’s point is to situate Austen more firmly in lived reality; Evans’ lively drawings similarly capture the past without prettifying it. A bracing corrective to the more simpering extremes of the Janeite universe.

This original and historically rich graphic biography uses a patchwork quilt as a framing device to pastiche together the story of Jane Austen’s life. Evans employs an omniscient, storybook voice throughout, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about the colorful cast of characters in Austen’s life…Rich with creative liberties and historical detail.

Evan’s fascinating graphic biography of Jane Austen. A work of extraordinary depth…The art is charming, with expressive characterizations and period-accurate renderings of clothing, carriages, and architecture. Patchwork is an inventive graphic biography of Jane Austen, putting her works into personal context.

This artful and thought-provoking graphic biography from Evans stitches a postcolonial layer into the narrative by examining the fabrics worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries…Evans pointedly and beautifully illuminates the seams of this quilted narrative.

This energetic book, brimming with bright pages of illustration paired with often bounteous text, is premised on a piecing together – hence, the crafting metaphor of its title – of the threadbare record of its subject's short but productive life. The book will be highly satisfying to anyone craving more companionship with Jane Austen, both her life and her work.

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