Blue is the Warmest Colour
Blue is the Warmest Colour
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By Julie Maroh, translated by Ivanka Hahnenberger. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press.
Softcover, 160 pages, Colour, 2013 (originally published in French in 2010)
A New York Times bestseller
The live-action French film version of Blue is the Warmest Color won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013.
Originally published in French as Le bleu est une couleur chaude, Blue is the Warmest Coloris a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out. Clementine is a junior in high school who seems average enough: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant and electric, and Clementine find herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.
Vividly illustrated and beautifully told, Blue Is the Warmest Color is a brilliant, bittersweet, full-color graphic novel about the elusive, reckless magic of love. It is a lesbian love story that crackles with the energy of youth, rebellion, and desire.
First published in French by Glenat, the book has won several awards, including the Audience Prize at the Angouleme International Comics Festival, Europe's largest.
The live-action, French-language film version of Blue Is the Warmest Color won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2013. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos, the film generated wide praise as well as controversy for its explicit scenes. It opened in the fall of 2013 through Sundance Selects/IFC Films (USA) and Mongrel Media (Canada) as well as other countries around the world, including the UK and Ireland (Artificial Eye) and Australia (Transmission Films). It was named best foreign-language film by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle.
Reviews
A sensitively told narrative.
-Tetu Magazine
A hymn to love.
- Le Figaro
-Le Figaro
A beautiful, moving graphic novel.
-Wall Street Journal
Delicate linework conveys wordless longing in this graphic novel about a lesbian relationship.
-New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)
A tragic yet beautifully wrought graphic novel.
-Salon. com
Exquisite, tender, and thoroughly magnificent . .. A work of naked, heart-wrenching profundity. Blue Is the Warmest Color is an experience that every lover--of art, of comics, of romance, of human beings, period--must know for themselves.
-Broken Pencil
A lovely and wholehearted coming-out story . .. the illustrations are infused with genuine, raw feeling. Wide-eyed Clementine wears every emotion on her sleeve, and teens will understand her journey perfectly.
-Kirkus Reviews
A deeply compelling story . .. Maroh displays tremendous insight into the highs and lows of a young girl's journey of self-discovery as she moves from adolescence into adulthood.
-Lambda Literary
This is a masterful and compellingly human story that will astound lovers, loving grown-ups and all lovers of comics narrative. Yes, there is a movie, but for pity's sake read this first. ..
-Read This Now (UK)
Julie Maroh, who was just 19 when she started the comic, manages to convey the excitement, terror, and obsession of young love-and to show how wildly teenagers swing from one extreme emotion to the next . .. Ultimately, Blue Is the Warmest Coloris a sad story about loss and heartbreak, but while Emma and Clementine's love lasts, it's exhilarating and sustaining.
-Slate. com
Love is a beautiful punishment in Maroh's paean to confusion, passion, and discovery . .. An elegantly impassioned love story.
-Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
A gripping graphic novel . .. At a time when gays and lesbians in the Western hemisphere are enjoying unprecedented freedoms, Blue Is the Warmest Colorexplores the seemingly intractable prejudices that contribute to high suicide rates among LGBTQ youth. As such, it is a valuable resource for parents, educators, and others who work with adolescents. -Herizons
Well worth reading . .. Blue Is the Warmest Color captures the entire life of a relationship in affecting and honest style.
-Comics Worth Reading
The electric emotions of falling in love and the difficult process of self-acceptance will resonate with all readers . .. Maroh's use of color is deliberate enough to be eye-catching in a world of grey tones, with Emma's bright blue hair capturing Clementine's imagination, but is used sparingly enough that it supports and blends naturally with the story.
-Library Journal (STARRED REVIEW)
A superb, coming-of-age graphic novel, gorgeously illustrated . .. Anyone, be they LGBT or not, who is looking for a great love story will enjoy this novel. -LGBT Reviews(GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association)
