Renowned French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim is back with the third in his Little Nothings series. Volume three continues the comic journal vignettes of Trondheim’s day-to-day musings on life or, as the author writes on the back of his book, “a whole lotta not much.”
Trondheim’s chicken-man character continue his globetrotting ways, making observations on fashion in Italy (“it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a Capri jumpsuit all in one piece”), the culture of Fiji (“normally when Fijians are bothered by something they don’t understand or about which they don’t know how to react, they laugh”), the pros and cons of different countries’ climates (“if you leave leather shoes in a closet for a few days, mushrooms and mildew will start growing in them”), as well as paranoid and deadpan commentary on mundane things like the cat (“you big pile of crap”), sitting on a plane (“it’s smoke from a plane”), and being a dad overwhelmed by the technology of his children’s electronic gadgets.
Trondheim’s colorful sketches are rich in detail and his character’s witty, paranoid, quirky thoughts of his ‘ordinary’ situations highly entertaining. You see the irony and the reality in each of the vignettes that will have you nodding your head in recognition of situations (“Crap! Why did I hum what he was whistling?”) and observations (Trondheim, who is chasing a mouse around the house, looks at the cat and asks, “Why can’t YOU catch a mouse?”).
If you like watching Seinfeld, this is along similar lines - a book ‘about nothing’ that shows you how funny life is with all its mundane ironies and irritations, and how funny our behaviors are as we go through the details of our ‘normal’ life. Light and enjoyable read for teenagers and adults alike, that will make you take a second look at all the ‘little nothings’ in your everyday life. Recommended.