Name: Graphic Novel Book Club: The Weight
Start: 2026-01-06T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 176 Rue Bernard Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada, Quebec H2T 2K2

Join us at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly (176 Rue Bernard Ouest) for our Graphic Novel Book Club! On Tuesday January 6th at 7 pm we will be discussing THE WEIGHT by MELISSA MENDES, published by Drawn & Quarterly. This meeting will be hosted by D+Q's Executive Editor, Tom Devlin. The Graphic Novel Book Club is free to attend and no reservation is required.
Buy the book: https://mtl.drawnandquarterly.com/theweight
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THE WEIGHT: A rural family’s cycle of love, loss, and renewal, set against the beauty and adversity of mid-century America
Edie comes into the world calmly as the adults around her rage. Her father is a cruel man who beats her mother regularly and much of Edie’s young life is spent trying to escape this tyrant. “Why doesn’t she ever cry?...Gives me the creeps.” Of course, being a child means she lives a child’s life—she still has laughter-filled sleepovers and outdoor adventures with the local rat pack of kids still too young to work. But Edie’s heart grows callous as her father becomes drunker and angrier.
Melissa Mendes’ pastoral cartooning captures the openness of rural America—soft breezes, tall grass, whirring grasshoppers, rainstorms, skinned knees. But all the while, the cruelty, the disappointment of man lurks behind the barn and in the trailer. Life can be stubbed out as easily as a cigarette tossed in the dirt. One moment all focus, next, gone without a thought. Will Edie find herself repeating a cycle or will she be free like she felt as a child?
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MELISSA MENDES grew up in rural Western Massachusetts, where she currently lives and works. She started making comics in 2002 at Hampshire College and got her MFA from the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2010. Melissa was the recipient of the 2010 Xeric comics self-publishing grant for her book Freddy Stories. In 2014 she began creating and self-publishing the Ignatz-nominated comic The Weight, now a graphic novel, inspired by her late grandfather's life.
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Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Accessibility information:
- Our store uses StopGap.ca ramps in an effort to encourage accessibility. Both the step at the entrance, followed by a half step and a door have StopGap ramps. The door opens inward and is not automated. Once inside, there are no additional steps.
- There is one non-gendered bathroom.
- It is not a sober space, our events sometimes offer alcohol.
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Montreal, Quebec