Lucille

Lucille is a new 500 page graphic novel (well it's new in the United States, recently translated) written and drawn by Ludovic Debeurme and published by Top Shelf. Lucille won the Angouleme Essential Award and it is already being compared to Craig Thompson's Blankets. Largely the comparisons to Blankets are because Lucille is a coming of age / first romance story and it is a very big book.

While Lucille is a coming of age / first romance story, it's a darker version of this type of story as the central character, Lucille, is anorexic, and the other central character, Arthur, comes from a family with a sad history. The art in Lucille isn't the typical style even associated with alternative comics, as there isn't a panel to panel structure and the dialogue isn't circled in dialogue balloons, but the minimalistic style Debeurme works in is very much the equal of this powerful story that you will want to share with others and will certainly be on many top ten best graphic novel lists of 2011.