Long Story Short

Book excerpt: Literature is long. Comics are short. Does Proust get you down? Do you find The Unbearable Lightness of Being simply unbearable? Is The Inferno your own private hell? Do you long to be conversant about classics like Moby Dick, the Bhagavad Gita, Madame Bovary, and, um, Twilight? Bestselling illustrator Lisa Brown (The Airport Book; Baby, Mix Me a Drink) did her homework. Long Story Short offers 100 pithy and skewering three-panel literary summaries, from curriculum classics like Don Quixote, Lord of the Flies, and Jane Eyre to modern favorites like Beloved, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Atonement, conveniently organized by subjects including “Love,” “Sex,” “Death,” and “Female Trouble.” Lisa Brown’s Long Story Short is the perfect way to turn a traipse through what your English teacher called “the canon” into a frolic—or to happily cram for the next occasion that requires you to appear bookish and well-read.