Drawn and Quarterly, 2021.
Guy Delisle’s Factory Summers is exactly what the title implies: a memoir covering the summers when Delisle worked in a factory (or “the mill”) in Quebec City that produces large rolls of paper for newspapers in Montreal. His book explores the type of work he did there and the hard work it was, but Delisle also introduces the reader to the variety of people who work in the mill. There is not much more plot than that, as the book is divided into four sections: the three summers he works at the mill and the summer he decides not to, taking a job in animation. That final summer becomes the pivotal one, as he leaves animation school and begins his career as an artist.