A fellowship at a remote Vermont college results in isolation (first shunned for his Mormon upbringing, then attacked as “intolerant” by easily triggered students). A would-be celebratory homecoming trip for a Denver museum exhibit is crashed by his boorish brother. Longer autobiographical pieces are carried by regret-tinged humor. Recurring features like “Mellow Mutt” and “19th Century Cartoonist” recast Van Sciver’s worries as comic interludes. Alternating real life and fiction, the volume’s united by roiling anxiety over a troubled childhood (separated parents, leaving Mormonism, legacy of abandonment) and the grinding penury of the artist’s life. A gloom-struck aging cartoonist grapples with disillusion in this self-satirizing collection of tales from Van Sciver ( Fante Bukowski), flavored with a dash of untrustworthy narration.
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