"Ghost World" Review

I recently read Ghost World by Daniel Clowes. I’ve heard that Daniel Clowes is one of the most influential indie comic creators, so naturally I wanted to check out some of his work. I looked up what were his best books and, according to Reddit, Ghost World was a great spot to start. When I first started reading it, I didn’t understand what was so great about it. By the end I did.

Ghost World is a very “slice of life” book, which is a phrase I feel like I keep overusing. But this is also about as slice of life as you can get. It follows two teenage friends, Enid and Rebecca, and there’s not really a plot to it. It’s mainly just them talking about things that teenage girls probably talk about; friends, boys, gossip, their plans after high school. For a majority of this book, I was uninterested because I didn’t really care about the things they were talking about or the problems they were facing. There were no great conflicts they had to overcome that had me rooting for them.

At times, the characters were also very unlikeable. They say a lot of mean things about other kids they know and are always making fun of people, even though they’re clearly not “the cool kids”. But while this is unlikeable, it’s also very true to life, since a lot of teenagers can be insufferable.

At one point in the book, Enid and Rebecca see an ad in the newspaper from a man looking for a woman he met before and included his phone number for her to call him. As a prank, Enid and Rebecca call the man pretending to be the woman, and tell him to meet them at a diner. This is probably my favorite scene in the book, because once the guy shows up it becomes clear that the girls didn’t plan on what to do next. They hide in their booth at the diner for twenty-five minutes until the guy leaves, and as he goes he says to them “very funny”. They seem to be guilty and embarrassed, but then forget about it and go on about their lives.

There’s no major conflicts or dramatic events in the story, it’s just them living their lives as teenagers. The only main “wants” is Enid wants to go away to college and Rebecca doesn’t want her and Enid’s friendship to drift apart. But in the end, SPOiLERS, Enid doesn’t go away to college, and her and Rebecca do end up drifting apart. At the end of the book, an older Enid sees Rebecca through a window and comments on how she hasn’t talked to her in a long time, and then she gets on a bus to leave her hometown and start fresh somewhere else.

It was such a simple ending, but it honestly got me a little emotional (not that emotional, mind you, I’m still a big manly man-man), because even though I didn’t always like these characters, I had unintentionally become attached to them. I’m glad I read through all the “boring” dialogue and meandering because it made them feel more real. And I could relate to them because I remember talking about and doing dumb stuff with my friends as a teenager.

The ending’s also somewhat somber because there’s no “resolution to a conflict”, it’s just that this story about adolescence and friendship ends naturally, when the adolescence and friendship of the characters is over.

I think this book is great. I don’t know if I’d really recommend it to anyone, though, because I didn’t really like it until I finished it.

6 angsty teenagers out of 10.

I’m now moving onto re-reading Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, so stay tuned for reviews of those!

‘Till next time.

-RD