Each segment raises well-thought-out concerns about life milestones, what they mean, and how any individual fits into them. Later chapters cover why they broke up - and their disagreement over whether to have kids - and how they became engaged. She opens with their first date, although in the mists of time it becomes jumbled, emphasizing what she remembers most. Underneath it all shines through her feelings for her groom (who’s been part of previous books, so presumably, he knew what he was getting into marrying an autobiographical cartoonist), grounding the events in the reason it’s all being put together. One high point is the short reminder, somewhere in the middle, that ultimately this is all about celebrating love with people who care for you. Each element comes with its own conflicts and challenges, sometimes with strong emotional connotations.

There’s plenty positive, too, celebrating a wedding as a ceremony of love - between two people, but also among those who gather for them.Ĭhapters deal with the ways brides are manipulated, planning the food, dress shopping, choosing music, picking from a variety of traditions, and deciding to build a barn on her mother’s property for the location. And she could come to terms with her feelings about the conflict between her career and her role as a wife and potential mother. By customizing so much of it, she could reassert herself as a person, not a role.

She spent a year getting her wedding together, making much of it herself, since she felt, as an artist, she wanted her own stamp on the ceremonies. (It’s a marker of how quickly our US culture has changed that some of her concerns, about how some relationships, those of same-sex couples, aren’t recognized the same way, are now outdated.) In this graphic memoir, she works through her qualms about the history of the ceremony as marking women as property, coming to terms with how brides are treated with such privilege, without justification. As is true of many young women, Knisley is ambivalent about the many traditions around the ceremony and the costs involved. Something New: Tales From a Makeshift Bride takes a very modern approach. Lucy Knisley’s latest autobiographical tour-de-force expands beyond the food memoirs and travelogues she’s known for by tackling one of the biggest events in many women’s lives: her wedding.

Something New by Lucy Knisley