My Most Secret Desire
Starred Review.Originally published in her comic bookDirty Plotte, then collected in 1995 (and slightly expanded for this edition), Doucet's adaptations of her dreams are some of her weirdest, strongest and funniest work. The French-Canadian artist writes in hilariously crumpled English (one story is called "An Happy Ending Nigthmare" [sic]) and draws herself as an abject, bedheaded mess ambling through a world littered with garbage. She doesn't seem to hold anything back from her subconscious—sexual fantasies, genital mutilations, messy apartments—they're all represented. One section is devoted to dreams in which she turns into a man; another long piece presents a series of dreams about having a baby (who variously has a tail or is a small cat or "wants to go back in"). Doucet's sense of humor is intimately tied to her cluttered but striking visual style: one of the book's funniest strips is a one-pager in which she imagines what it would be like to shave if she were a man, mimicking the facial contortions (and bloody nicks) of men looking into a mirror with a razor and concluding with an ear-to-ear grin as she yells, "Haaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" The more screwed-up her fantasies are, the more entertaining they get, and almost every panel is a scribbly, quirky delight.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.