Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
98th out of 1,512 books
—
3,107 voters
The Complete Essex County (Essex County #1-3)
by
Jeff Lemire
Where does a young boy turn when his whole world suddenly disappears? What turns two brothers from an unstoppable team into a pair of bitterly estranged loners? How does the simple-hearted care of one middle-aged nurse reveal the scars of an entire community, and can anything heal the wounds caused by a century of deception? Award-winning cartoonist Jeff Lemire pays tribut...more
Paperback, 512 pages
Published
August 1st 2009
by Top Shelf Productions
(first published June 15th 2009)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
Also posted on "A day in the life of a Sidekick"
"The Complete Essex County" or a story of the tree of life and some crows in between
Art: 4
Story: 5
Overall rating: 5
BEWARE! It might not look that way, but this book will emotionally damage you beyond repair.
“The Complete Essex County” gathers the Essex County Trilogy “Tales from the Farm”, “Ghost Stories” (my favourite) and “The Country Nurse” (which actually includes a couple of extra stories). And let it be know, I will read anything from the han...more
"The Complete Essex County" or a story of the tree of life and some crows in between
Art: 4
Story: 5
Overall rating: 5
BEWARE! It might not look that way, but this book will emotionally damage you beyond repair.
“The Complete Essex County” gathers the Essex County Trilogy “Tales from the Farm”, “Ghost Stories” (my favourite) and “The Country Nurse” (which actually includes a couple of extra stories). And let it be know, I will read anything from the han...more
I'm going to sit and cry for a while now, but then I'll probably be confused. I spent a while trying to figure out what the point was, especially with different parts being about unrelated characters, and then I realized how the characters were related, and I realized it's a book about a community. Hence the place-name title, "Essex County." It's about whole generations of people and how they relate to each other. The way relationships break and stay broken for whole lives is what makes me cry....more
I got this in the same library trip as Craig Thompson's Blankets, and I feel like the two are birds of a feather. I preferred the art over the story by a long shot. The black-and-white work in this one is a lot sketchier, but it's a neat look.
Storywise, Essex County is less blatantly autobiographical than Blankets, and therefore a lot less self-absorbed. It isn't perfect, though. Each character only hits one or two notes on an emotional spectrum, so they feel pretty flat to me. There's also a st...more
Storywise, Essex County is less blatantly autobiographical than Blankets, and therefore a lot less self-absorbed. It isn't perfect, though. Each character only hits one or two notes on an emotional spectrum, so they feel pretty flat to me. There's also a st...more
I loved this book. It's entry into the Canadian Literary Canon is well deserved. It speaks to the Canadian experience, both rural and urban living, and the importance of hockey to our culture. The art, how the author uses the stark contrast between black and white, with a soft grey-scale for the initial flashbacks, is masterful.
One feature that particularly shone out for me was how the author uses the features of the characters to show how they're related to one another. It truly echoes the way...more
One feature that particularly shone out for me was how the author uses the features of the characters to show how they're related to one another. It truly echoes the way...more
3 likes · like · see review
view 1 comment
Essex County is a powerful story that will pull at your heartstrings from the moment that you pick it up. Lemire weaves three seemingly distinct stories of families in Essex County, spanning multiple timelines, and then...quietly without the reader even noticing he weaves them together into a story on community and family. Lemire has crafted a timeless tale, one that will still hold meaning long into the future as it touches upon topics that will never grow old. He brings a unique look and persp...more
This is the first graphic novel I've read and I was very happy with the experience. Lemire’s images are very evocative and easily express powerful emotions of loneliness, sadness and anger. I particularly loved the first section, Tales from the County, and felt great sympathy for the characters. Each one is alone, dealing with grief and loss in his own, lonely way. Lemire captures feelings of alienation and tension between uncle and nephew very well. The rebuffing of the uncle by the nephew felt...more
3 likes · like · see review
A truly heartbreaking anthology, Essex County tells the interwoven stories of several residents and generations from a fictionalized version of the real Canadian shire: a recently-orphaned aspiring superhero; an aging former professional hockey player; a widowed country nurse. With his at-times crude line drawings, Lemire is able to bestow his characters with real emotions, especially through facial expressions, and the book with a real sense of tragedy. Though at times the tales verge on melodr...more
honestly, i RARELY read comics or graphic novels. if sara quin did not recommend and stand by this graphic novel on canada reads 2011, i wouldn't even know it existed. heck, if i saw it randomly lying somewhere, i wouldn't even give it a second glance.
essex county surpasses my expectations. i knew it would be good, since it got voted into canada reads, but i was like meh. and then my sister, who very rarely reads, said it was real good. and my curiousity got the better of me.. so i gave it a tr...more
essex county surpasses my expectations. i knew it would be good, since it got voted into canada reads, but i was like meh. and then my sister, who very rarely reads, said it was real good. and my curiousity got the better of me.. so i gave it a tr...more
Well, that was a great thing to read. I don't want to be too effusive here, but that's probably one of the top things a person could read in the graphic medium. It's also something that belongs solely in that medium. It wouldn't have worked nearly as well as a film, as a novel, concept album, or interpretive dance. Lemire's art reminds me of Charles Schultz with a smattering of Ralph Steadman. And the black & white is perfectly sparse, and sucks you in from the very first panels. And while "...more
Perhaps the most distinctly Canadian graphic novel to have been written within the last two decades, The Complete Essex County brings a level of depth one would not necessarily expect of hockey players. Coming out of a profession wherein players are not ordinarily depicted with any level of emotional depth (with the possible exception of Radio-Canada's Lance et Compte), retired player Jimmy Leboeuf finds himself playing surrogate father figure to young Lester Papinose, who resides with his uncle...more
CROSSOVER SUNDAY
"Where does a young boy turn when his whole world suddenly disappears? What could change two brothers from an unstoppable team into a pair of bitterly estranged loners? How does the work of one middle-aged nurse reveal the scars of an entire community ?... " Cover Blurb
My Goal with crossover sunday is to encourage people to look at the some times overwhelming world of illustrated fiction. Jeff Lemire's book Essex County is a gem in this field.
Essex County is a province of Ontari...more
"Where does a young boy turn when his whole world suddenly disappears? What could change two brothers from an unstoppable team into a pair of bitterly estranged loners? How does the work of one middle-aged nurse reveal the scars of an entire community ?... " Cover Blurb
My Goal with crossover sunday is to encourage people to look at the some times overwhelming world of illustrated fiction. Jeff Lemire's book Essex County is a gem in this field.
Essex County is a province of Ontari...more
Last week I was talking with my writing teacher, Dale, about graphic novels. I was reading one before class started and he, pretty unfamiliar with the form, was curious what a lit snob like me thought of them.
I told him I was pretty new to the form myself, having only started reading graphic novels seriously for the past year or so. What I had found, I said, is that I tend to like the books that feature a writer and artist team. It seemed to me that the novels with just one person doing the art...more
I told him I was pretty new to the form myself, having only started reading graphic novels seriously for the past year or so. What I had found, I said, is that I tend to like the books that feature a writer and artist team. It seemed to me that the novels with just one person doing the art...more
Komiks czytało się świetnie, tak jak zresztą każdą dobrze napisaną powieść.
Bohaterem pierwszej części jest młody chłopak Lester. Jego matka umarła na raka i chłopiec trafił pod opiekę wuja, który stara się jak może wywiązać z roli opiekuna. Lester zaprzyjaźnia się z właścicielem sklepiku. Jimmy rozumie jego pasję, podziwia pierwsze nieporadne rysunki, uczy grać w hokeja. W dodatku twierdzi, że zna bardzo dobrze ojca Lestara, którego chłopiec nigdy nie widział.
W księdze drugiej: Ghost stories mam...more
Bohaterem pierwszej części jest młody chłopak Lester. Jego matka umarła na raka i chłopiec trafił pod opiekę wuja, który stara się jak może wywiązać z roli opiekuna. Lester zaprzyjaźnia się z właścicielem sklepiku. Jimmy rozumie jego pasję, podziwia pierwsze nieporadne rysunki, uczy grać w hokeja. W dodatku twierdzi, że zna bardzo dobrze ojca Lestara, którego chłopiec nigdy nie widział.
W księdze drugiej: Ghost stories mam...more
Full disclosure time: I hadn’t heard more than passing comments made about Jeff Lemire’s Essex County before this year, and I might not have picked it up had it not made the top five of this year’s Canada Reads competition. That’s not a knock against the book by any means, I simply had not given it the attention it deserved.
I am so happy to have rectified this gross oversight.
Bundling together the three independent-yet-interlinked volumes that made up the saga (Tales From The Farm, Ghost Stories...more
I am so happy to have rectified this gross oversight.
Bundling together the three independent-yet-interlinked volumes that made up the saga (Tales From The Farm, Ghost Stories...more
1 like · like · see review
I want to give this 4.5 stars, but since I can't, I'll round it up to 5. I loved this collection. Hockey and rural Canada and interconnected stories told in a quiet, reflective, unassuming way--that's beauty. If I were rating just the stories, just the text, I'd give it 5 stars. The only thing that made it 4.5 was the art. I liked the stark two-tone pencilwork, but I just wanted a little bit more.
SPOILER beyond this point...
I just had to mention that when Vince passes away on page 327, and I tur...more
SPOILER beyond this point...
I just had to mention that when Vince passes away on page 327, and I tur...more
1 like · like · see review
Part 1: I enjoyed this so much I didn't realize how fast I was reading it. Maybe I should slow down and study the panels longer! The panel framing and contrast black and white was done really well to show isolation, sadness and divisions. I quite like the art in the closeup panels; the facial drawings felt very fluid, like a one line drawing where you never lift your hand from the page.
Part 2: This second part really reinforces for me why graphic novels are so brilliant. The author drew an emoti...more
Part 2: This second part really reinforces for me why graphic novels are so brilliant. The author drew an emoti...more
1 like · like · see review
I suspected Essex County was going to be awesome. I also suspected it was going to totally bum me out. Turns out I was right.
These three interconnected stories about broken and then awkwardly-pieced-back-together farm families in rural Essex County, Ontario are moving and at points haunting. No melodrama here, though: the somber, melancholy mood is understated in the sparse text and dialogue. Instead Lemire conveys that mood chiefly through his sketchy, exaggerated, B&W art. A perfect fit I...more
These three interconnected stories about broken and then awkwardly-pieced-back-together farm families in rural Essex County, Ontario are moving and at points haunting. No melodrama here, though: the somber, melancholy mood is understated in the sparse text and dialogue. Instead Lemire conveys that mood chiefly through his sketchy, exaggerated, B&W art. A perfect fit I...more
Hype. I hate the word, but yet I buy into it. Or I try to cast it aside, leave it on the vine to rot and proceed forward. 'Collected Essex County' boasts multiple awards, including literary awards in Canada. In comics, breaking through the fourth wall means being that benchmark for literature. Transcending images on the page to stand proudly on a shelf with, in this case, the Margaret Atwoods or Michael Ondaatjes of the world. No cartoonist ever sets out to do this on purpose; hell, they're just...more
I stumbled on to this graphic novel at the comic book store when I was buying comics for my sons. I'm not unfamiliar with graphic novels, but I hadn't expected to fall as deeply in love with this particular book. I usually buy the books that are written as complete novels- this is a collection of the stories from Essex County that Mr. Lemire has drawn and published separately over time. The characters and stories are heartbreakingly sparse, yet as a collection they weave a beautifully rich tapes...more
This graphic novel collection was a Christmas gift that I'm very glad I received. I find it hard, at times, to purchase graphic novels because they can be expensive yet I can read them very quickly. I found myself slowing down with this collection, though, in a very good way. I wanted the story to last longer so I'd read maybe 10 pages at a time to make it last longer.
This collection is set in Essex County, Canada and there are quite a few characters who get to tell their various stories of farm...more
This collection is set in Essex County, Canada and there are quite a few characters who get to tell their various stories of farm...more
This is a book about haunted people. Everyone is haunted by regrets, remembrances, lost chances, or the unknown past. There is a beauty to the story. The sadness of people connected by bloodlines and marriages is fragmented into individual lives and all the mistakes, choices and happenstance those lives contain. Then those fragments are brought together in a stained-glass-like assemblage that shows the intricacy of relationships and, perhaps, a lesson in the uselessness, or really the harm of si...more
I saw some of the original, uncollected "Essex County" comics in the comic stores when they came out and I remember flipping through them from time to time but never really piquing enough interest to bring me to purchase them. Then I heard the collected graphic novel version had made it onto "Canada Reads" and I wondered what I had missed. Since reading the entire thing, I now understand that the effect of this work is slow, elegantly understated and cumulative, so it is hard to "get it" on a ca...more
Essex County (Collected) is my first foray into the genre of graphic novel, and it only came across my reading palate as a part of a group of us reading the CBC Books: Canada Reads: Top Five Novels of the last decade (http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/).
While unsure what to expect, the mode of story telling was immediately familiar thanks to years of reading Calvin & Hobbes. Lemire's graphics, while often dark and moody, were quite capable of expressing story rich with history, and family,...more
While unsure what to expect, the mode of story telling was immediately familiar thanks to years of reading Calvin & Hobbes. Lemire's graphics, while often dark and moody, were quite capable of expressing story rich with history, and family,...more
Fantastic work.
Lemire eschews the city-centric nature of most comic book stories, and returns to his hometown for inspiration. "Essex County" is a collection of stories about the big lives of small-town Canadians, and by extension the Canadian experience. They love. They lose. They play hockey.
The stories stretch from the founding of the county to present day, with a meticulous genealogy linking the tales across time.
Once again, Lemire writes and illustrates the entire work. I'm not sure what it...more
Lemire eschews the city-centric nature of most comic book stories, and returns to his hometown for inspiration. "Essex County" is a collection of stories about the big lives of small-town Canadians, and by extension the Canadian experience. They love. They lose. They play hockey.
The stories stretch from the founding of the county to present day, with a meticulous genealogy linking the tales across time.
Once again, Lemire writes and illustrates the entire work. I'm not sure what it...more
Compiling Lemire's series of three linked short graphic novels (plus a couple of related one-shots and some bonus material) about people from Essex County, Ontario. I had read the first part, Tales from the Farm, before, but the rest was new to me on this reading. I am kind of a sucker for hockey fiction, so Tales from the Farm and Ghost Stories were unsurprisingly my two favourite parts of this book, but The Country Nurse is also excellent, and the revelation of the connection between all the c...more
Teton Co Library Call No: GRAPHIC NOVEL LEMIRE J
Marisa's Rating: 4 Stars
This was an excellent graphic novel- a great recommendation by Mark P. This is a collection of works by Jeff Lemire about "Essex County" in Ontario Canada -- it tells the story of of the county from the perspectives of several generations of its residents. The book is beautiful, if not terribly sad and dark. I loved the focus on hockey - using it as something that bound people together but also a major plot line. Lemire did...more
Marisa's Rating: 4 Stars
This was an excellent graphic novel- a great recommendation by Mark P. This is a collection of works by Jeff Lemire about "Essex County" in Ontario Canada -- it tells the story of of the county from the perspectives of several generations of its residents. The book is beautiful, if not terribly sad and dark. I loved the focus on hockey - using it as something that bound people together but also a major plot line. Lemire did...more
The library by my house has a section of graphic novels with literally three on the shelf. Fortuitous that the two graphic novels currently on my "to read" list are 2 of the 3 books there. (Habibi is next.) Also grateful that the library is so close to my house, because these would be too hefty to carry around any farther.
Emotionally moving and surprising. Love the connections between the stories. First two stories are definitely the strongest. The second is one I would read again and again. Gre...more
Emotionally moving and surprising. Love the connections between the stories. First two stories are definitely the strongest. The second is one I would read again and again. Gre...more
A wonderful graphic novel about people who experience loss, guilt, and loneliness but are still tied together by bonds of love and compassion. What's also cool is that while this is very much a human drama, it is still a comic about superheroes, not just because one of the characters is obsessed with comics and dresses up as a caped crusader, but also because the crux of the narrative involves hockey players, who are superheroes in Canadian culture. It isn't a completely snooty alt-comic in that...more
A collection of three stories that intertwine and connect in a small town called Essex. The first story is about a boy who is living with his Uncle because his mother has died. The boy befriends an ex-hockey player who helps him deal with his new life. The second story is about two brothers who used to play hockey together professionally until one event causes them to not speak for 20 years. The last story is about the town nurse who knows everyone’s secrets and is hoping she can use this knowle...more
If you had asked me a few months ago if I thought a graphic novel could break my heart, I would have said no. That was until I brought home my boss' copy of Essex County, by Canadian artist and writer, Jeff Lemire. A contender for last years Canada Reads, Essex County is a collection of three stories, all told in graphic novel format. Though each story is separate, they tie together some of the same characters at different points in their lives.
The first story, Tales from the Farm introduces us...more
The first story, Tales from the Farm introduces us...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Jeff Lemire is an award-winning Canadian cartoonist, and the author of the Essex County Trilogy, Sweet Tooth and The Nobody. Lemire is known for a his moody, humanistic stories and sketchy, cinematic, black-and-white art.
More about Jeff Lemire...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“there are only two ways to be completely alone in the world: lost in a crowd or in total isolation.”
—
3 people liked it
More quotes…
