Match BookDrawing Blood
Molly Crabapple
2015 · 352 pages · Memoir
How it reads
Drawing Blood is memoir (illustrated memoir, specifically), and its dominant mood is melancholy. It's quietly sad, wistful and reflective. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.
It's set in several locations, in the recent past, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, art and creativity and class and society. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.
It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 352 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's moderately known: read by plenty of people, but not a household name.
Pick it up if…
- you're in the mood for something melancholy
- you want something to chew on
- you want a complete story in one book
Maybe not if…
- you need something funny or hopeful
All 15 dimensions
- Genre
- memoir
- Author gender
- female
- Author experience
- established
- Setting: place
- multiple locations
- Setting: time
- recent past
- Mood / feeling
- melancholy
- Pace
- moderate
- Tone / weight
- heavy and literary
- Length
- medium
- Narrative style
- first person, one narrator
- Publication era
- recent
- Popularity
- moderately known
- Series vs standalone
- standalone
- Themes
- identity, art and creativity, class and society
- Ending style
- bittersweet
What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.
Books with a similar reading
The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.
What HappenedHillary Rodham ClintonShares: memoir, melancholy mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace
I'm Glad My Mom DiedJennette McCurdyShares: memoir, melancholy mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace- Persepolis: The Story of a ChildhoodMarjane SatrapiShares: memoir, melancholy mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace
- Uncultured: A MemoirDaniella Mestyanek YoungShares: memoir, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, set in multiple locations
- Victim F: From Crime Victims to Suspects to SurvivorsDenise HuskinsShares: memoir, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, set in multiple locations
White OleanderJanet FitchShares: melancholy mood, heavy and literary tone, moderate pace, bittersweet ending
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