jordan wellington lint
The 23 stories collected by Zadie Smith in 'The Book of Other People' have one thing in common: they're about character. As Smith notes, "the instruction was simple: make somebody up."
Besides notable contributions by Dave Eggers (the forlorn fairytale of 'Theo' the giant), Miranda July (the reverberations of a chance meeting with Hollywood star 'Roy Spivey') and A.L. Kennedy (the bloody tragic breakdown of 'Frank'), one story that stands out is Chris Ware's graphic story 'Jordan Wellington Lint'.
In his neurotically meticulous style, instantly recognizable ever since 'The Smartest Kid on Earth', Ware traces the life of Jordan Lint from birth up to age thirteen, with each page showing a single day of each year. From the blurry perceptions of a baby to the rowdy fantasies of boyhood, the storytelling is almost phenomenological in its subjectivity. With half-understood family tragedies lurking in the background, the reader is left to fill in their impact on the protagonist's development. It's a psychologist's case study - with a cliffhanger at age thirteen, just as puberty sets in.
Interestingly, Ware is continuing the story of Jordan Lint's life and further installments will be published in Virginia Quarterly Review "as Ware completes them". (The image above is from VQR; Jordan Lint at age fourteen.)