The Book of Memory Gaps

by Cecilia Ruiz

Overview

Simon remembers every act of sin ever confessed to him. Pavel forgets what he has just played and rehearses the same melody over and over. Unable to recall faces, Veronika uses different perfumes to remember the ones she loves. The Book of Memory Gaps is a collection of darkly humorous mini-stories that examine our curious and capricious unconscious. With concise, lyrical prose and a discerning command of color, Cecilia Ruiz captures the delicate and fleeting nature of memory, as well as its immense power–after all, who would we be without it?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698407312
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/10/2015
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Cecilia Ruiz is an illustrator and graphic designer living and working in New York. She obtained a BFA in Graphic Design from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a MFA in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. This is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

05/18/2015
Ruiz, a graphic designer and illustrator, pairs pale somewhat lonely illustrations and very short prose to create a series of tiny vignettes in her debut book, which is only a comic by the most tenuous of definitions. The well-crafted prose manages to be simple in vocabulary yet complex in meaning, and encourages readers toward further thought. The volume is deliberately full of white space, which speaks nicely to the ideas of memory—of gaps and loss—and the way people interpret and experience such things. That said, for a book that takes about five minutes to read, the price point is tough to swallow. Though the prose is insightful and haunting and will stay with more introspective readers, there's not enough content to justify the price, and those who pick the book up expecting a comic or an engaging narrative are likely to come away disappointed. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Cecilia Ruiz offers a darkly humorous but warmhearted account of various memory errors and disorders….The illustrations—lovely and quirky—manage to both depict a snapshot in time while also conveying memory’s ephemeral, transient nature.”—Bruce Poulsen Ph.D., PsychologyToday.com

“Read[s] like Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies if it were written by Dr. Oliver Sacks….a quaint, beautifully designed little book with wonderful art.”—MentalFloss.com

From the Publisher