There’s no overt homophobia at all, from any of the characters. There’s no coming out scene, there’s no internalized homophobia. It is, perhaps, a new generation of queer love. Sexuality is part of each character, as it is is for many teenagers, but queerness is treated with the same normalcy as other relationships. Romance is kind of at the heart of this book. But Ari, like many teenagers, is longing to be somewhere new, away from here. And Hector’s joy for baking makes patience easy, and Ari’s relationship with his parents eases too.Īri’s parents, taken together, are a bit like Yoda, riding around in his backpack telling him to work harder and be more present. Then along comes Hector whose joy for baking is contagious. In this way Bloom is a meditation on patience and slowness and joy. Through the book, and through his journey, he starts to appreciate and enjoy the moments too. He is super impatient to move on to “the next big thing” of moving to the city with his not-quite-fully-formed band. This slowing down parallels the journey of the main character, Ari. And the result is that we slow down to enjoy the moments and moods. They don’t move the plot forward in any obvious way. The entire book is drawn in black and a beautiful blue-green. Bloom is a graphic novel about a young man in a small town, working in his family’s bakery.
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