Summer 1999. Long Island, New York. Bored, restless, and lonely, Ali never expected her life would change as dramatically as it did the day she walked into the local Stop & Shop. But she's never met anyone like Justine.
Justine...haunts with its depiction of an intense kind of young female friendship that blurs desire and destruction ... Justine lives inside that old chestnut of queer adolescence: Do I want to be her or be with her? But even that doesn’t fully convey the full magnitude of the contrasts and contradictions inherent in Ali and Justine’s relationship ... I read Justine in one sitting, because I couldn’t look away from the striking intimacy of this friendship, especially since that intimacy is so consuming and often very bodied ... Harmon brilliantly weaves through the confusing, overwhelming feelings of repressed queerness in these pages ... Contain[s] excellent place writing ... In short, Justine is a tiny book of big feelings. It’s a searing debut for Harmon, whose prose and illustrations are both a captivating mix of spooky and lovely. It’s a quiet horror story in which beauty is a terror and friendship is an undoing of the self. The final line has haunted me long past reading it.
A tremendous book: deep, moody and dark, but not without a compelling breathlessness. Teen life, loneliness, sex, body issues, friendship, queerness and familial discord are all finely wrought. The minimalist prose and illustration are no less gorgeous for being sparse. Ali’s pain and her indifference are perfectly captured, and Harmon has threaded the right amount of pop culture into her tale. Pre-cell phones and social media, Ali, Justine and their cohorts pour through magazines to gaze on idealized images of women, watch skate videos again and again, ponder hip-hop lyrics, take whatever drugs they can, and navigate tenuous and exciting relationships. The tragedies here are shattering and mundane.
An uncommon and incomparable coming-of-age story punctuated with enchanting and evocative line drawings, Justine is a highly recommended debut novel.
It doesn’t just share these types of experiences; it feels like they felt. Like dredging up memories I haven’t thought about in years. Remembering a time that was equally full of the reckless abandon of youth and the pressure to fit in. It’s funny … the whole ‘90s style, the aesthetic, has circled back around now. Guess it’s the perfect time for a book like this ... Forsyth Harmon stuns with her debut, Justine, an illustrated novel which, while brief, is not short on impact. Harmon is stunningly perceptive in her ability to convey the experiences of adolescence: The uncertainty of who you are which gets tangled up and lost in assimilating to who you are with. The normal teenage angst which often masks the underlying issues young women face with their bodies and their minds. The particular way friendships at this age are a complicated blend of admiration, envy, love, and hate. The mistakes made and the lessons learned, some not until it’s too late.The prose is amplified by Harmon’s intricate line drawings which serve to flesh out the story without having to say a single word. Simple, yet bold, these stark black and white illustrations help fill the gaps in the reader’s imagination while also spurring further reflection upon the narrative. One without the other would feel incomplete; however with the images and text situated side by side, the book feels whole.
