The book starts s-l-o-w-l-y, but stay with it, because in part 2 what began with isolated pieces weaves a compelling picture of how families fragment and regather. By the end, both the reader and the characters have experienced alchemical changes. Much of the book’s charm is in that slowness as it documents the daily, forgettable dialog that cements relationships.
10 days after I put down the book I got the joke of the title. Self-indulgent metafictional navel-gazing with literal interstitial exploration. Did I include enough buzzwords? And it works. At least it worked for this reader, partly because of the slow burn it ignited in the back of my brain.
I read this book after having seen Dash Shaw’s vibrant animated film, “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5538568/?ref_=nv_sr_2

What a great read. ( )

Another depiction of a family falling apart, so no points for originality on the subject matter. There are a few lovely sequences that span a page or several pages, but other than that I'm not too taken with the (purposefully crude?) art. ( )

Dash Shaw's Bottomless Belly Button takes its navel-gazing seriously, as its title suggests. In it, grown children deal with their elderly parents' decision to divorce late in life, and (to varying degrees of self-consciousness) how the end of their parents' marriage illuminates their own relative states of indecision -- and a grandkid gets in on the act, too. May the circle be unbroken.

If the main character didn't have a face like a frog, and if occasional forays into the literal architecture of storytelling (schematics of scenes, trips behind and between the walls of the house in which much of the story takes place) didn't hint at the diagrammatic fever that was Shaw's Bodyworld, this would be a fairly straightforward, indie-cinema vision of familial dysfunction.

One thing that's clear from the book: its considerable size gives an impression of effort exerted, and perhaps it therefore serves as a reminder that restraint requires as much as (if not more effort than) does production.

Amazingly good. Reading it felt like watching a really good indie movie. ( )