Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel

A darkly funny graphic novel from the acclaimed author of Petropolis Ulinich earned her literary stripes with her debut novel, Petropolis, and gained wide recognition for her “textured characters” (BUST Magazine) and “beautiful, far-ranging voice” (Gary Shteyngart). Ulinich’s long-awaited second work of fiction, the graphic novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, evokes Louis C.K.’s sensibilities and Amy Winehouse’s longing and anguish—often in the same frame—as Ulinich turns her sharp eye toward the strange, sometimes unmooring world of “grown-up” dating. After fifteen years of marriage, thirty-seven-year-old Lena embarks on a string of online dates and receives a brutally eye-opening education in love, sex, and loss while raising her two teenage daughters. With references to Bernard Malamud and Chekhov along the way, this is a smart, funny story told beautifully through Ulinich’s text and drawings.