Book Review: At a Crossroads

You just graduated college, now what to do? Conventional wisdom tells us it’s time to get out there in the so-called “real world” and get in on the ground floor of a lifelong career. That’s what you’re repeatedly told in your teens and early ’20s, but from a jaded 39 year-old’s perspective I now know it’s a crock. Many young college graduates go through a strange “holding pattern” which might even involve returning to the reassuring cocoon of Mom and Dad’s place to regroup for awhile. Kate T. Williamson’s sweet autobiographical comic At a Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents’ Place recounts such an experience. After her graduation, Williamson found what was supposed to be a 3-month stay at her parents’ home stretch out to over a year. The book details her mundane life of holidays, concerts, working at a flower shop, noticing the passing seasons, and harboring a strange obsession with the music of Hall & Oates. Although it may seem boring, Williamson has a gift for noticing the bizarre little details in ordinary life that is simultaneously funny and touching. A lot of it reminded me of my own “crossroads” time of being jobless and living with the parents for a few months in the fall of 1992. The book’s minute observations are mirrored in her simple yet effective drawing style, enlivened with lush watercolor paints. This is a brief read, and a bit expensive for such a slight story, but she deals with a subject that is never covered in books and yet remains something that most everyone can relate to.

At a Crossroads: Between a Rock and My Parents’ Place was just recently published by the Princeton Architectural Press. Buy at Amazon here.