STYLISH VITTLES: All the Way

This second installment of an ongoing, seemingly autobiographical series concerns a romance between a cartoonist named Tyler Page and a classmate, Nanette, during their senior year of college. The work's realism and a few metafictional oddities provide a break from what could have been a lengthy exercise in melodrama. As the book opens, Tyler and Nanette's relationship is in bloom, though not as serious as it will become by book's end. Readers are privy to Tyler buying a car; his telling Nanette "I love you" for the first time; the couple consummating their relationship; parental encounters; and so on. Page shows and analyzes every point with the grit of a teen TV show—the story's long on detail, but short on penetrating insight. The storytelling is inventive, and Page has a flair for comic book pacing, but the drawing is frequently awkward and riddled with anatomical mistakes that seem glaring in a realistic drama. Nevertheless, Page offers some surprises. The story is told in retrospect by an older Nanette and Tyler sitting on a couch speaking to the readers, à la When Harry Met Sally. And there's an unexplained sub-level to the book told through superheroes, the grandiose Astroboy in particular. These scenes occur at crucial dramatic moments and, one assumes, will add up to something as the series continues. Page also inserts moments of cosmic awe, as he wonders aloud about philosophical quandaries. If Page can make these layers ultimately mean something, he will have accomplished no small feat. As it is, the book is a worthy effort. (Aug.)