Blue Is the Warmest Color

by Julie Maroh

Overview

A New York Times bestseller

The original graphic novel adapted into the film Blue Is the Warmest Color, winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival; released in the US this fall by IFC Films/Sundance Selects

In this tender, bittersweet, full-color graphic novel, a young woman named Clementine discovers herself and the elusive magic of love when she meets a confident blue-haired girl named Emma: a lesbian love story for the ages that bristles with the energy of youth and rebellion and the eternal light of desire.

First published in France by Glénat, the book has won several awards, including the Audience Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe's largest.

The live-action, French-language film version of the book, entitled Blue Is the Warmest Color, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2013. Directed by director Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos, the film generated both wide praise and controversy. It will be released in the US through Sundance Selects/IFC Films.

Julie Maroh is an author and illustrator originally from northern France.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551525143
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	211,822
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Julie Maroh is an author and illustrator originally from northern France. She studied comic art at the Institute Saint-Luc in Brussels and lithography and engraving at the Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels, where she still lives. After self-publishing three comics collections, her French-language graphic novel Le bleu est une couleur chaude was published by Glénat in 2010; it won several awards, including the Audience Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe’s largest.

Editorial Reviews

…[Maroh's] delicate linework and ink-wash effects illuminate the story's quiet pauses and the characters' fraught silences and wordless longing.

The New York Times Book Review - Douglas Wolk

★ 09/16/2013
Love is a beautiful punishment in Maroh’s paean to confusion, passion, and discovery. Clementine, a high school student, is in the midst of an identity crisis when she locks eyes with older, blue-haired Emma on the street. That moment keeps bubbling up in Clementine’s dreams, drawing her toward a romantic truth that neither she, her family, nor her friends can or want to understand. Maroh’s moody, exaggerated drawings and cool-hued colors give everything a dreamlike patina. Adolescent identity-seeking plays out against a mixture of heart-thumping decisions and brief but steam-heated romantic interludes. Maroh twists this potentially diagrammatic love story into a more operatic affair by telling it all in flashback, as Emma reads Clementine’s diaries under the glowering eyes of her beloved’s parents, who blame Emma for their daughter’s death. Translated from the French, Maroh’s graphic novel has already been adapted into a film that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. Controversy over the film’s explicit love scenes (criticized by some, including Maroh herself, for being too voyeuristic and unromantic) will likely result in a lot of interest in this elegantly impassioned love story. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"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 Color is a sad story about loss and heartbreak, but while Emma and Clementine’s love lasts, it’s exhilarating and sustaining." —Slate.com

"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)

"Blue Is the Warmest Color captures the entire life of a relationship in affecting and honest style." —Comics Worth Reading

"A tragic yet beautifully wrought graphic novel." —Salon.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 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

"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)

"It's not just the French who have a better handle on sexy material than Americans — Canadians do, too ... Who's publishing it? Not an American publishing house but by Arsenal Pulp Press, a Canadian independent." —Los Angeles Times

"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

"A hymn to love." —Le Figaro

"A sensitively told narrative." —Tetu Magazine

From the Publisher

2013-09-01
From Belgium, the graphic novel on which the 2013 Palme d'Or–winning film of the same name was based. Clementine is 15 in 1994 when she sees a beautiful young woman with blue hair crossing the plaza. That night, the woman figures in an erotic dream, and her world is rocked. "I had no right to have thoughts like that." When she meets blue-haired Emma for real, she begins an at-first platonic relationship with the art student, who tells Clementine of her own coming out. The relationship turns sexual (graphically, beautifully so) and complicated. The story is told in flashback; readers meet a years-older Emma in the aftermath of Clementine's funeral as she reads Clementine's teenage diaries. The late-2000s scenes are somber and washed with blues, while the bulk of the tale is drawn in delicate black, gray and white with strategic highlights of blue. The text is occasionally clunky and purposive—"We do not choose the one we fall in love with, and our perception of happiness is our own and is determined by what we experience…"—but the illustrations are infused with genuine, raw feeling. Wide-eyed Clementine wears every emotion on her sleeve, and even if today's teens will feel that her mid-'90s experience is rather antique, they will understand her journey perfectly. Though a bit of a period piece, a lovely and wholehearted coming-out story. (Graphic historical fiction. 16 & up)

Kirkus Reviews