Sky in Stereo

Mardou captures the grace of late adolescence in this intriguing, if uneven, graphic novel. Iris, a young college student, is torn between two deeply different worlds: the confinement of her mother's strict Jehovah's Witness beliefs and the hedonistic pleasures of '90s Manchester. Drugs, boys, and jobs in fast food ensue as she claws her way towards something like adulthood. Mardou does a wonderful job of capturing the aimlessness of this in-between age, as well as its unexpected joys. Iris's ardor for floppy-haired young men with good taste in music is depicted with a wonderful degree of warmth and honesty. But the book meanders, wallowing in drug trips and circuitous flirtation to the point of dullness. Mardou's visuals, charmingly simple at the best of times, do not help these lesser moments, and at its worst, the book screeches to particularly self-indulgent halts. At it best, it's an enjoyably earnest look at a difficult age. (Oct.)