Blankets

By James Poniewozik

Blankets (Top Shelf; 582 pages) is an autobiographical novel about a sensitive, artistic, vegetarian, teenage boy who finds love with a sensitive, artistic, vegetarian, teenage girl. That is, it should be insufferable. Instead it is a rarity: a first-love story so well remembered and honest that it reminds you what falling in love feels like. The narrator, Craig Thompson, grows up in rural Wisconsin in a devout Christian family. Craig's childhood is one long bout of fear--of bullies, hell, the baby-sitter who molests him and his little brother--until, at a Christian winter camp, Craig meets Raina, a doe-eyed outsider from a troubled family.

Blankets' charm and strength are that, like a love-sick teenager, the book is not embarrassed to be earnest about either Craig and Raina's romance or their religion (in one panel, hormone-drunk Craig sees Raina as a vision from Song of Solomon). As their affair gets complicated, so does the novel, becoming a bittersweet meditation on family, faith, loss and memory.

Thompson complements it with rapturous drawings of winter in northern Michigan and Wisconsin, a season that for all its harshness can--like Blankets--be achingly beautiful. --J.P.