By Cameron Woodhead
The Animators
Kayla Rae Whitaker
The Animators. By Kayla Rae Whitaker.
Scribe, $32.99
This bright debut from Kayla Rae Whitaker reworks the familiar buddy novel into a story of two young women united by ambition, artistic talent and enterprise. Mel Vaught meets Sharon Kisses at a posh art school they've both won scholarships to attend. They're chalk and cheese – Mel is gay with a wild streak, raised by a delinquent mother in the backblocks of Florida; Sharon is introverted, straight, a shy girl from rural Kentucky. Bonding over their outsider status and shared love of comics and cartoons, the pair become famous animators. Mel mines her personal history for their most famous work, but when Sharon falls ill, it is she who must draw herself into, and out from, her own past. A vivid, intensely rendered portrait of a close partnership between women.