I'd seen this book on a lot of shelves recently, and something about it always caught my interest. Not enough to actually READ it for several months, but I kept going back to it, until, finally, I put it on hold at the library and had it shipped up to me.
Turns out I've actually read some of Anya's Ghost author Vera Brosgol's other comics work in the Flight anthology of comics. She put out a couple of good pieces there (including this one), but I really didn't remember much about her until I read her bio at the end of Anya's Ghost and looked her up again. I love it when that happens.
Anyways, Anya's Ghost tells the story of a high school girl, the daughter of a Russian immigrant, who stumbles across the skeleton of a long-dead girl and suddenly finds herself haunted.
The art style is pretty reminiscent of the Scott Pilgrim - it shares both the large, cartoony shapes and slightly-hipster wannabe tone. That, by the way, is a good thing - the comic pages are easy to look at, easy to read, and expressive without being showy.
The real focus of the story is Anya herself - her insecurities about her family background, her desires to fit in at school, and her body issues. Anya's a great character - one of the most believable teenage girls I've read in a long time. Her story is one I felt was worth reading mainly because it felt so NORMAL.
Except, you know, for the whole ghost thing.
Anyway, it's a quick read (about an hour or so) and a great YA book, in the same vein as American Born Chinese, another great book which, sadly, I've not yet mentioned on my blog. Well worth checking out.
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