Tamara Drewe

Description: Winner of the Grand Prix 2009 de la Critique Bande Dessinee. Tamara Drewe has transformed herself. Plastic surgery, a different wardrobe, a smouldering look, have given her confidence and a new and thrilling power to attract, which she uses recklessly. Often just for the fun of it. People are drawn to Tamara Drewe, male and female. In the remote village where her late mother lived Tamara arrives to clear up the house. Here she becomes an object of lust, of envy, the focus of unrequited love, a seductress. To the village teenagers she is 'plastic-fantastic', a role model. Ultimately, when her hot and indiscriminate glances lead to tragedy, she is seen as a man-eater, a heartless home-wrecker, a slut. First appearing as a serial in the Guardian, in book form Tamara Drewe has been enlarged, embellished and lovingly improved by the author. Review: Posy Simmonds is the laureate of English middle-class muddle, a peerless observer of their romantic confusions, emotional insecurities and professional vicissitudes. She gets to the heart of them more incisively and wittily than any number of her contemporaries... Tamara Drewe offers not only the psychological intricacy of good fiction but also the pictorial subtlety of art -- Mail on Sunday * Anthony Quinn * Simmonds manages to be both sympathetic and merciless...she has a novelistic insight and ear for dialogue... If civilisation falls leaving only Tamara Drewe behind, it can be used as a blueprint for a flawless reconstruction of English village life in the mid-2000s, right down to the hoodies in the bus shelter * Daily Telegraph * Posy Simmonds is a true child of Hogarth, her accomplished cartoons a merciless commentary on the way we live now -- Penny Perrick * Sunday Times * Simmonds is much more than a cartoonist: she makes us realize that a great cartoonist can be a great artist too -- Stella Tillyard * Prospect * Author Biography: Posy Simmonds is the author of many books for adults and children, including Gemma Bovery, Lulu and the Flying Babies and Fred, the film of which was nominated for an Oscar. She has won international awards for her work, including the 2009 Grand prix de la critique bande dessinee for Tamara Drewe and the 2024 Grand Prix at France's Angouleme International Comics festival for a lifetime's achievement. Both Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe have been made into successful feature films. Her third graphic novel, Cassandra Darke was published in 2018. She lives in London.