Stitches: A Memoir Paperback - 2010

Media reviews

New York Times #1 Bestseller

"An emotionally raw, artistically compelling and psychologically devastating graphic memoir of childhood trauma. . . . Graphic narrative at its most cathartic."
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[A] profound and moving memoir. . . . Smalls tells his story with haunting subtlety and power."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A triumph of both the spirit and of graphic storytelling."
— Los Angeles Times

"A powerful memoir of childhood and adolescence. . . . For those who appreciate unique stories of survival and second chances, Stitches is a beautiful memoir of a lost childhood, and a voice bitter sweetly found. It will leave you shaken and deeply satisfied."
— Globe and Mail

"David Small’s Stitches is fantastic. . . . Undoubtedly one of the best books of 2009."
— January magazine

"Extraordinary. . . . Small's seemingly simple black-and-white wash captures people, emotions, relationships, and plot subtleties with grace, precision, and a flawless sense of graphic narration. . . . Highly recommended."
— Library Journal (starred review)

"One word. Phenomenal. . . .This book changed my opinion of the [graphic novel] genre forever. . . . If you haven't read a graphic novel before, let this be your first. . . . Highly Recommended."
— Jeff Rivera, GalleyCat

"Like other 'important' graphic works it seems destined to sit beside — think no less than Maus — this is a frequently disturbing, pitch-black funny, ultimately cathartic story whose full impact can only be delivered in the comics medium. . . .If there's any fight left in the argument that comics aren't legitimate literature, this is just the thing to enlighten the naysayers."
— Booklist (starred review) 

"Small's art — by turns expressively abstract and clinically realistic — ensures that Stitches lands on the reader with satisfying emotional weight. The book contains several long, wordless passages in which Small's visual storytelling comes to the fore — facial expressions, body language and page layouts tell us more than long stretches of exposition ever could. . . . Palpably, recognizably human."
— Glen Weldon, NPR.org

"David Small's Stitches is aptly named. With surgical precision, the author pierces into the past and, with great artistry, seals the wound inflicted on a small child by cruel and unloving parents. Stitches is as intensely dramatic as a woodcut novel of the silent movie era and as fluid as a contemporary Japanese manga. It breaks new ground for graphic novels."
— Françoise Mouly, Art Editor, The New Yorker

"My first reading of Stitches left me speechless. And in awe. David Small presents us with a profound and moving gift of graphic literature that has the look of a movie and reads like a poem. Spare in words, painful in pictures, Small, in a style of dry menace, draws us a boy's life that you wouldn't want to live but you can't put down. From its first line, we know that we are in the hands of a master."
— Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-winning comics artist

"[A] wholly original work and one of the most intense graphic novels of this or any other year."
— ICcv2.com (4 stars)

"It is truly a beautiful and moving graphic memoir. . . . David's story deserves to be told, and Stitches is an astonishing rendition of his experience."
— Dallas Books Examiner

"Stitches is one of the most compelling books I've read in a long time. David Small, with his ground-breaking work, has elevated the art of the graphic novel and brought it to new creative heights."
— Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man

"David Small evokes the mad scientific world of the 1950s beautifully, a time when everyone believed that science could fix everything. . . . Capturing body language and facial expressions subtly, Stitches becomes in Small's skillful hands a powerful story, an emotionally charged autobiography."
— Robert Crumb

“A moving story about the way man hands on misery to man, it also captures, seemingly effortlessly, the repression and double standards of the 1950s. . . . If this isn’t the definition of a satisfying literary experience, I don’t know what is. . . . Small’s illustrations are exquisite. But, like any novelist, he also has an eye for the telling moment. . . . A triumphant testament of survival.”
— The Observer


From the Hardcover edition.