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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227350.Shortcomings?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Shortcomings" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1188748743m/227350.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/227350.Shortcomings?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Shortcomings</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/43554.Adrian_Tomine">Adrian Tomine</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20317382?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars The pain, humor and pitfalls of both inter- and intraracial relationships are laid bare in the graphic novel Shortcomings. Clean and minimalist black and white drawings are accompanied by dialog that cuts to the quick. For example, when one character defends her questionable boyfriend by saying, "If it really matters to you, he's not White...He's half Jewish, half Native American." LOL at the classic escape clause for White people with a heavy conscience. "Is that what he put on his college application?" comes the response, "Or wait...Do they even have affirmative action in fashion school?" The plot centers around Ben Tanaka, a sarcastic and insensitive Berkeley resident, with a fetish for White girls. He attends an Asian-American film festival and finds himself the only person in the theater not wildly enthusiastic about the arty feature. "I mean, why does everything have to be some big 'Statement' about race? Don't any of these people just want to make a movie that's good?" he says, and his girlfriend responds by wondering if he's ashamed to be Asian. His response? "After a movie like that, I'm ashamed to be human." I'm not taking Ben's side on this one. The movie, as it's presented, actually seems good. Give Adrian Tomine credit for this. Most works that center around jerk protagonists (Curb Your Enthusiasm comes to mind) are overly sympathetic, unabashedly celebrating their loser-heroes and indicting the rest of society for not doing the same. Tomine, on the other hand, is willing to let his protag be wrong. The plot twists around itself in a karmically satisfying manner, in which the sins that Ben commits are later committed against him. This is both sad and satisfying, because Ben has a lot of good qualities (his sharp wit, for one) in addition to his numerous faults. In other words, he seems like a real person, which is the crowning accomplishment of this book. My only complaint is that the story is left unresolved. Much like the Sopranos, it doesn't end, so much as it merely stops, which left me wondering if my book was missing it's last pages. This is in keeping with the true-to-life nature of this work, but reality itself is not a very good read. This book's only shortcoming is the lack of a satisfying finish 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/441356?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Dominica's review
rating:

The pain, humor and pitfalls of both inter- and intraracial relationships are laid bare in the graphic novel Shortcomings. Clean and minimalist black and white drawings are accompanied by dialog that cuts to the quick. For example, when one character defends her questionable boyfriend by saying, "If it really matters to you, he's not White...He's half Jewish, half Native American." LOL at the classic escape clause for White people with a heavy conscience. "Is that what he put on his college application?" comes the response, "Or wait...Do they even have affirmative action in fashion school?"

The plot centers around Ben Tanaka, a sarcastic and insensitive Berkeley resident, with a fetish for White girls. He attends an Asian-American film festival and finds himself the only person in the theater not wildly enthusiastic about the arty feature. "I mean, why does everything have to be some big 'Statement' about race? Don't any of these people...more The pain, humor and pitfalls of both inter- and intraracial relationships are laid bare in the graphic novel Shortcomings. Clean and minimalist black and white drawings are accompanied by dialog that cuts to the quick. For example, when one character defends her questionable boyfriend by saying, "If it really matters to you, he's not White...He's half Jewish, half Native American." LOL at the classic escape clause for White people with a heavy conscience. "Is that what he put on his college application?" comes the response, "Or wait...Do they even have affirmative action in fashion school?"

The plot centers around Ben Tanaka, a sarcastic and insensitive Berkeley resident, with a fetish for White girls. He attends an Asian-American film festival and finds himself the only person in the theater not wildly enthusiastic about the arty feature. "I mean, why does everything have to be some big 'Statement' about race? Don't any of these people just want to make a movie that's good?" he says, and his girlfriend responds by wondering if he's ashamed to be Asian. His response? "After a movie like that, I'm ashamed to be human." I'm not taking Ben's side on this one. The movie, as it's presented, actually seems good. Give Adrian Tomine credit for this. Most works that center around jerk protagonists (Curb Your Enthusiasm comes to mind) are overly sympathetic, unabashedly celebrating their loser-heroes and indicting the rest of society for not doing the same. Tomine, on the other hand, is willing to let his protag be wrong. The plot twists around itself in a karmically satisfying manner, in which the sins that Ben commits are later committed against him. This is both sad and satisfying, because Ben has a lot of good qualities (his sharp wit, for one) in addition to his numerous faults. In other words, he seems like a real person, which is the crowning accomplishment of this book.

My only complaint is that the story is left unresolved. Much like the Sopranos, it doesn't end, so much as it merely stops, which left me wondering if my book was missing it's last pages. This is in keeping with the true-to-life nature of this work, but reality itself is not a very good read. This book's only shortcoming is the lack of a satisfying finish

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