Books like The Hipless Boy

Say for a second you’re just a normal person. You live in a hipster neighbourhood but you’re not a hipster. You’re hipless. This the premise behind this collection of interlinked stories done in a graphic novel format that originally found life as a weekly column in the McGill Daily. The protagonist here tries to live his life like an open heart, and a curious cat, meeting and mingling with a collection of Montreal oddballs. He finds love, loses love, learns to like cross-dressing, and finds something else. Along for the ride are his best friends Minerva and Owen. She is a semi-bisexual private-school dropout, he is an art-school fabulist who constantly conjures up new ways to court controversy. Crisp linework resonating with clean writing, the short stories collected here reveal an inter-woven community of new adults, struggling to find families of their own making. With artwork reminiscent of Adrian Tomine’s, this collection’s warmth and humour remind us that the hipless are human too.