Empire State: A Love Story

I read this twice and loved it more after my second read. The art is simple and the story is simple. There isn't a real “climax” to the story – the main character tries to create one, but it is completely deflated.

What I really loved about this book is that it's less a story about a boy who follows a girl who is his friend to New York in an attempt to confess his love for her. It's more about a guy who's trying to love somewhere other than home. The character has never left Oakland and has all these romantic ideas about traveling across the country in a Greyhound and meeting his friend at the Empire State Building, just like in Sleepless in Seattle. He has a website, but soon learns that he's completely behind the times in terms of web design; he doesn't know how to work a cell phone. He thinks he needs a passport to fly in a plane. He chooses to send his friend a letter confessing his love to her, rather than call her or, even, email her. He lives with his mom, and his job is binding books at the public library. He lives in a world that is still very tactile and concerned with experiencing all sensations of being alive in the world. He's very much a romantic and idealist, where his friend is more of an intellectual and an academic, sarcastic and dry.

For me, “Empire State” is absolutely a love story for Oakland, for home. I'm a sucker for those. There really is no place like home, whether it's the Bay Area, New York or the desert. Read this one through twice.