AJ Dungo

A memoir in graphic novel form about a young woman who struggled with bone cancer most of her life and died quite young, as told by her long-time boyfriend. They shared a love of surfing, and Dungo alternates their story with the history of surfing, focusing specifically on two founding fathers of the modern sport, Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake.
The memoir is clearly lovingly done and the illustrations are simple and elegant, but the decision to alternate his own story with a surfing history, although it seems on the surface like an interesting idea, didn't really work for me in its execution. The two stories just didn't seem to mesh well enough and the transitions between chapters felt, then, a little too jarring. Still, it's a good memoir and worth a read.… (meer)