Reading Noelle Stevenson’s 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝑮𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝑶𝒖𝒕 was a cathartic affair. I picked it up during a particularly demanding week, emotionally speaking, in my life, and found a lot of the emotions I was experiencing at the time (good, bad, unseemly) echoed in this book. It helped give many of these messy feeling some semblance of shape and form, which in turn made me feel less like a vulnerable blob just floating in the void.⠀
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It was also a slightly surreal experience in the sense that this book is essentially a candid glance behind the curtains of a career and life of someone whose work has provided you with a great deal of amusement and delight over many years and, despite knowing that compassionate and lively art can come from grief and hardship, seeing it depicted in such a frank and vulnerable manner can still be somewhat of a shock to the system. The raw, intimate vignettes collected in this volume are as surprising and startling as they are engaging and illuminating.⠀
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𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝑮𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝑶𝒖𝒕 is a portrait, and a work in progress at that, in the truest sense of the term. It’s honestly been a privilege to watch Stevenson’s work grow all these years, and hope I get to see it evolve even further.⠀
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𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗺, 𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲𝘀, 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗮, 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻