Neighborhoods BARREL ROLLOUT
by Rob Staeger
We don’t get much out of barrels anymore: pickles and monkeys, mostly. But Anya Ulinich’s new graphic novel, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, is packed with dates, of the online (and absurd) variety. Encounters with Disaster Man, the Diamond Psychiatrist, and The Vampire of Bensonhurst are chronicled in short, tragicomic vignettes as Lena struggles to find romance after a divorce while raising two teenage daughters. Ulinich, whose debut Petropolis was listed in the Voice’s Best Books of 2007, studied to be a painter before finding success as a novelist. Now combining the forms, she’ll be reading from her darkly funny graphic novel tonight.
Tue., July 29, 7 p.m., 2014