The illustrations and artwork were so profoundly beautiful, I could feel my heart clench at a simple expression drawn on a character's face, a simple sigh, a simple bow of the head. I was fully immersed in the lives of those characters that I was surprised to get to the last page. What a fantastic series this turned out to be. It was lying around my house for a while before I finally picked it up and started reading.when suddenly I was on to the second volume, then the third, then I was online looking up more of Jeff Lemire's work. This trilogy is both, a graphic novel that centers around hockey, specifically the Toronto Maple Leafs, so I didn't know how engrossing it would be or if I made the right choice buying it. I have never been a huge fan of graphic novels, or sports related stories in general. I'm going to review this series as a whole and not separately, because you cannot take one book away from the trilogy. Fans of comic books will find rewarding reads with this book and the others in the series. They have heart, soul, wit, beauty, and ingenuity on every page.

Lemire's shown with this trilogy of books how gifted a comic book artist he is and having read his other excellent books I have to say I've enjoyed the Essex County books the most. The artwork, as I've said of the other books, is nothing short of masterful, haunting, beautiful, and unique. The origins of her family and the LeBeuf family are revealed in this book with a flashback sequence with her mute mother, and the revelations tie together the first two books in the series nicely. She talks to her dead husband at his grave once a week and visits her mother, the oldest woman in Essex County, who can't speak once a week: in short, we see the loneliness of her life as she questions whether she does any good at all. She is a widower with an unloving son who lives with her and spends his time at work and out of the house. The character was last seen in the last book, 'Ghost Stories' as the nurse looking after Lou LeBeuf before his death, and in this book we see more about her life and her family's life. Lemire finishes his superb trilogy of comic books set in the fictional Canadian county of Essex County, with 'The Country Nurse'.

Jeff lemire essex county trilogy