Witty is the word that comes to mind when I think of this book. Claire Bretécher makes incisive observations about being female in a big city.

I really enjoyed reading this comics. Her artwork is simple and funny. It is definitely worth to read.

This is a refreshing comic book for adults and YA. It reads as individual, though longer, comic strips with each having a plot and punch line. The art is simple and the stories funny.

A good English collection of Claire's cartoons, many of them which were published, previously in the National Lampoon collection of her work.

The slice of life still holds up, and is still funny. Very wordy, but worth the read.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Yup, you guessed it – the Frustrated are those saddled reading these funny-as-a-hernia "comic strips", with their artwork so godawful you get the shock of your life when someone turns out to be a female, and woefully boring script delivered in unattributed way so you never know which character says what, all in an overly-awkward italic font. Just avoid -if this is groundbreaking, I want my ground back.

I'm a long-standing fan of Claire Bretècher and it was a pleasure to read this book.
It's funny and full of food for thought.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC

Jules Feiffer With A Gallic Kick

A unique feature of any Feiffer strip was his ability to capture perfectly the cadences and "feel" of everyday speech. That remarkable skill, and the ability to capture and draw just the right character expressions, allowed him to structure a strip that established a character, told a story, drew in the reader, and set up the concluding punchline - be it satirical or exasperated or generously humane. That is exactly what I found over and over again while reading these selected pages from Bretecher's work.

These strips are both brutal and gentle. They aren't sarcastic; they are satirical and pointed, which is different. But sympathetic mockery is still mockery, and the foibles and pretenses and self-delusions that Bretecher skewers deserved her attention in the 70's and most certainly deserve to be revisited. These strips are as fresh and pertinent now as they day they were first published, and they are a delight.

Everyone will find a few favorites, and a few that are so well done that you'll reread them immediately just to enjoy how well structured and perfectly paced they are. (The page on which a few intellectuals discuss their summer reading plans is priceless and justifies the whole cost of this book right there.) Not a word is ever wasted, and if there were a genre called neurotic/frustrated haiku, this book would be on the top of the best-of lists.

So, whether the subject is politics, sex, marriage, feminism, activism, intellectual snobbery, parenthood, (or some heady combination of all of that), this book is a refreshing and rewarding find. I understand that Bretecher has achieved something of the status of a national treasure in France, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to discover why.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

'Les Frustrés: Selected Pages from Claire Bretécher's Groundbreaking Work' is from a collection of comics that ran from 1973 to 1980 in Nouvel Obs, a weekly French news magazine. It's look at the frustrations of intellectuals, snobs, feminists and the elite. The comics are still pretty funny and relevant today.

The subjects never go political, but they do touch on sex, feminism, motherhood, careers. Women compare conquests or troubles with men, and couples complain about each other. A couple on vacation talks about their serious book list and one man talks about reading Agatha Christie and Tin Tin.

I really liked this collection. The comics fall into more of the ironic and cynical type of humor, but that suited me fine. The art is a decent cartoonist style. I'm glad I was introduced to this French humorist and artist.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.