Paul Rainey’s ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’ Coming From D&Q – Now With Added Neil Gaiman…
by Richard Bruton
Coming from Drawn & Quarterly in January 2023, Why Don’t You Love Me by Paul B. Rainey is one of those rare books – complex, rewarding, and utterly spellbinding.
Back in February 2022, just as it was reaching its end as a webcomic, I reviewed Paul B. Rainey‘s Why Don’t You Love Me.
It’s being released by Drawn & Quarterly in January 2023 – go here to see the details and read an excerpt. And Paul’s just released the news that none other than Neil Gaiman has written the back cover blurb…
“When I began to read WDYLM I thought it read like any number of slightly surrealistic slightly vapid early-2000s stories that were basically the cartoonist’s way of telling you they hated everyone and everything. And then it came into focus and it wasn’t that thing at all.
And then it came into focus again, uplifting and heartbreaking and (a word that I use sparingly) relevant. The kind of story, leading to a last panel that’s all pain and joy and delivers the whole thing.
What a masterwork. To understand all is to forgive all.” – Neil Gaiman
I meant every word. https://t.co/7LNMzDEQpW
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) August 26, 2022
He’s absolutely not wrong. When I looked at it I loved it, saying this…
“It’s a long work, but it’s just so damn good, brilliant in its execution, guaranteed to leave you wondering… who are these people? what the hell is going on? what was that thing in the news? how come it all just switched? And so on and so on… intriguing, complex, fascinating, and absolutely spellbinding.”
It really is, something that starts as a mundane little thing about a suburban couple, Claire and Mark, and their two kids. But then things get strange. Wonderfully, perplexingly strange. Just like I said…
“But from the start, things just get so weirdly strange very quickly – of course, part of the brilliance is how Rainey pulls this off. There’s no great revelation here, just a slow realisation on the reader that everything’s completely off-kilter, a dash of the bizarre amongst the seemingly normal, absolutely mundane setting.”
Why Don’t You Love Me? By Paul B. Rainey. Published by Drawn & Quarterly in January 2023.
Mark your diaries for the book release in 2023. You’ll be wanting to pre-order it as soon as possible. But don’t just take my word for it, listen to what Neil Gaiman says…
