Two wickedly funny teenaged girls, Enid and Rebecca, struggle with sex, identity, loss of innocence, and those eternal adolescent questions: "What should we do now?" and " What should I do with my life?". Enid might be going off to college. Rebecca might wilt without her. Both might be in love with their quiet friend Josh.
This would be terribly precious and sentimental if these young women didn't think so fast and talk so sharp, like their clear forebears, Hopey and Maggie in Jaime Hernandez's Love & Rockets stories. Enid and Rebecca try to carve persona out of sheer attitude. But Clowes slices beneath the surface anger to show the sense of loss that haunts them, particularly Enid. The ghosts in her world are reminders of how much she has changed and will change, ghosts summons by old toys, old clothes, old songs. Ghost World captures that painful first flowering of nostalgia. Clowes reminds us that even the most perfect adolescent friendships are as brittle and fleeting as the pop passions of youth.
The story marks a clever maturation for Clowes, from laughing at people to caring about characters who laugh at other people. He teases us with autobiographical elements - the anagram name Enid Coleslaw, the appearance of a "Perry" cartoonist names David Clowes - as if to say "There's a lot of truth here." But despite the too-rich dialogue, the story's emotional authenticity is never in doubt. Simply put: You'll laugh, you'll cry.
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