Bright-eyed at Midnight

by Leslie Stein

"A gorgeous and meditative visual diary" -- publisher's catalogue

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Memoir, Graphic Novels Comics, Nonfiction, Art, Biography Memoir

200 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2015

About the author

Leslie Stein is an American cartoonist and rock musician living in Brooklyn, New York. Her diary comics have been featured on Vice and The New Yorker and collected as books by Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly.

Reviews

[Sooraya Evans · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cutesy art-style had potential.
But as a package, the whole thing was just plain messy :(

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

One year of daily diary comics, selected, essentially a visual diary of a young woman's year. From the title we see that she has insomnia, which becomes the occasion and central theme of the comic. The title also tells you that this is not a comic about much else, really. She's awake! And committed to drawing stuff every day.

It's colorful, with lots of pastels, and she depicts herself as this small girl figure, so it's cute to look at. There are no panels for the sequencing of images, and many of the images, as with many diary comics, are small, quick-sketched, so while attractive, it is also sometimes hard to follow. I find her persona in this comic likeable, I guess, but also found her story pretty boring, actually. As in: The point of the diary is the diary, the form itself, and not some topic shaped and deep and engaging. It's a diary, it's supposed to be about doing a diary.

At one point she uses excerpt of The Journals of Jules Renard to riff off, and this helped me focus for a time. And sometimes, not enough for me, she photocopies photographs or things about insomnia. I want to break up the monotony. Still, I like the look of it. Maybe when she finds a story to tell . . .

[André Habet · Rating 4 out of 5]

an enjoyable collection of diary comics that range in tone and technique. The book provides an impressionistic understanding of Stein's life as an early 30's artist working in Brooklyn. Stein comes across here as a very empathetic and grounded person, yet one struggling with issues such as alcoholism, insomnia (at one point connecting the two), and figuring out how to divide her time between the work that pays her and the ones that sustain her (comics and music). It's impressive how much Stein's precision improves across this year-long experiment. Looking forward to reading other work from her.

[King]

Makes me want to experiment and do some diary comics! Love the watercolor and lettering

[J.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a curated (by Stein herself) collection of experimental comic diary pages that she kept for a year. I'm a huge fan of autobiographical/diary comics, so I've read a lot of them and I can honestly say that Stein's approach is unlike any I've read previously.

Her stripped-down simplified figures (there are indications of eyes, mouth, hair and body, but no lines to provide shape to faces and legs/arms are merely lines), stream-of-consciousness style writing and lack of panel borders often made it hard for me to discern what exactly was happening. Plus, some entries were single pages and others multiple pages, but there was rarely any finality from one entry to the next. This made it pretty hard for me to follow at times.

I feel like this was a good exercise for her to work things out and try new approaches, but it didn't always make for interesting reading. Luckily, I really enjoyed her drawing style, so I remained enough engrossed to read through. I would give it 3.5 stars, but a lot of work went into this and I think it would appeal more to some people, so it gets a half-star bump.

[Kate Atherton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Leslie Stein - she is my favorite discovery of this past year and, she is a revelation. She does the most incredible, best job of showing herself conversing with customers, friends and love interests who are “off screen” or not pictured of any cartoonist. Leslie’s work is so relatable and raw, covering real relationships from close ones to acquaintances as she works at a bar, plays in a band, writes comics and battles loneliness, being extremely busy and loving it. Leslie Stein’s style is entirely unique - in the hundreds of auto bio memoirs I have read there is nothing like her. I want to read her work and then read it right away again. I hugged this book when I finished it.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars, but I rounded down because the work is a little uneven (and Stein even addresses this in her afterword). It was hard to understand what was going on in some of the first comics, but it became much more focused and easy to read later on.

I was initially kind of turned off by Stein's super minimalist and cutesy style, but it really grew on me and now I'm kind of in love with it.

This isn't a typical memoir and it took some time for me to grow accustomed to the diary-format, but I really appreciate that about it now. I'm interested in seeing more of Stein's work.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had picked up another of Leslie Stein's books at random and really enjoyed it, so when I saw that this was available on Hoopla, I jumped at it. It's a collection of diary comics spanning one year, and one that is especially endearing if a bit lopsided - which Stein herself acknowledges in the afterword, as her style and approach to the comics changes over the course of the year. Overall, though, it's a lovely collection and it's worthwhile to see how she really finds her voice and style over that year.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly magnificent! Books like this remind me why I love comics.

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leslie Stein's use of color and watercolor is just absolutely amazing.  I love her illustration style, how simple and yet how detailed it is.  It's just all around fun--which is exactly what it should be.  In a way, this comic anthology is also part memoir, and it details Stein's everyday life as artist and bartender, offering perspectives on her regulars, her struggle as an artist, and her successes.  

While other comics might fail at being separate yet cohesive, Bright-Eyed succeeds and succeeds well.  It's a pleasant turn of the decade read as we all head onto new horizons.

Review cross-listed here!

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was very so-so. I wouldn't call it a graphic novel of any kind, it's really just random thoughts and semi-diary entries. The first half of the book is rough. The entries make little sense, some of the pages are just doodles, and some "stories" just feel like random, personal thoughts that probably have meaning tot he author but serve no purpose to the reader.

The latter half of the book is a little more thought out but I still felt like I was just witnessing random thoughts from someone's journal. Any time there were entries that started to get deeper than surface-level emotion, the story would just end abruptly like it was trying to be fit on one or two pages only.

I did really like the artwork and the handwriting but overall this was too convoluted to recommend.

[Jesús · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peanuts strips for Broad City fans.

[P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super into this iteration of Leslie Stein's output. Big fan of the palette, the figure abstraction, the little stories that wind around and illustrate the workings of her mind.

[Audrey Class · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars for the lovely art, which is what convinced me to buy this book in the first place.

I suppose I came in with the wrong expectations, given that this was just a collection from a daily journal, and not really a story with a plot, but even so, it was too meandering and disconnected and empty to really hold my focus.

Even the points that might have had greater relevance (bits about childhood, her mother) were over in a flash of 2 pages and a handful of words, leaving them more like glimpses of moments than true moments of their own.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the art style and I love the idea of doing something creative and productive when you can't sleep but I have no clue what the majority of the book was about and not sure who, outside of herself, her friends, and family, would get anything out of the abstract fragments of her daily life.

[Andrea Trenary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it was Book Riot that suggested this one. Sadly I didn't like it as much as I hoped to. The start of the book was super cluttered feeling and seemed hard to read and follow, that got better as it went along. I did like some of the art style but I felt the book lacked substance.

[Lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love her handwriting....

[Icarus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in high school and now, again, as an adult. I understand her better now, I'd like to think. Little things that I thought were silly are now sad.

[Miya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love a good comic diary because I enjoy getting to read about a person's daily life and activities. Even if their lives are simplistic, it's nice to see that other people do ordinary things all of the time just like me. Leslie Stein's comic diary was not as compelling as others I have read, but I did appreciate her simplistic illustrations and wonderful use of color. There wasn't a lot that I found particularly arresting, but if you enjoy peaking into someone else's life for a little while, you might find this interesting.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primeira leitura do ano!

Eu sou bem viciada em ler diários ilustrados alheios, eu não sei exatamente como surgiu esse amor por esse tipo de quadrinhos, mas acho que em parte porque é sempre reconfortante ler sobre vidas comuns, não lineares é que não tem espaço para uma edição de texto polida como acontece em romances.

Em muitos momentos essa HQ é um pouco confusa e apresenta situações que não fazem muito sentido para quem não estava presente nos momentos, mas o conjunto da obra é bem lindo e estou apaixonada com a simplicidade das ilustrações em aquarela.

[TM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the art - it made me think more seriously about how I want to approach my own watercolours and how I could be more whimsical and consistent about my own journaling.

I struggled to find a story or some theme throughout it though, and maybe it wasn't supposed to have these things since it's a diary after all. But that did mean I struggled to stay interested as I flipped through the pages.

[Nomski · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a little while to get into its rhythm, but once I did, it was mostly fun. Sometimes it's all over the place, and sometimes it's really touching. Generally, it was kind of like reading through someone's sketchbook. Like, more fun if it's your friend, you know? But still, an entertaining afternoon read.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I agree that this collection is somewhat hard to follow, overall it was a lovely experience to see the way Leslie approaches visual storytelling in short one-a-day strips. Her color and art was so fantastic. Her moods and overall themes come through with little usage of words or context. Would recommend!

[Marcela Huerta · Rating 4 out of 5]

after many years of looking at it i finally read it; i find the style quite opaque in a way that sometimes left me a bit disconnected; it can be hard to distinguish characters and situations from the loose vagueness of the drawing style. even with all that, i enjoyed the opacity, it factored into the anxiety/insomnia she's experiencing in that immersive way that only comics can. beautiful

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una estrella completa a esos dibujos tan tiernos.
"The true artist will write in, as it were, small leaps, on a hundred subjects that surge unawares into his mind. In this way, nothing is forced. Everything has an unwilled, natural charm. One does not provoke: one waits. A scrupulous inexactness."

[MilesTeller Shirtless · Rating 4 out of 5]

So cool to see how quickly Stein goes from subpar at the daily diary comic to really, really good at it. Anyway, Stein is probably my favorite autocomics writer and this book is a good example why. Perfectly captures urban loneliness.

[Sarah Harrisミ☆ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of my top favorite non-narrative comics I’ve read. The experimentation within it is my favorite part. Every page felt very inspiring!

“Listen man…Let me lay it out for you…It doesn’t really matter. I’m the only one here.”

[Loz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting exercise in comic journaling. I really liked it! Love her loose art style, very emotive.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love autobio comics and journal comics, but this was a bit too uneven for me. I have been meaning to read this for a while, attracted to the title and art, so I think my expectations led me astray. I prefer this to Stein's earlier work (in both style and tone), but it still didn't hit for me.

[Eloïse Goffart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for the beautiful and original use of colors and textures, but not for the story; the story is impossible to decipher.