Building Stories

Summary

Building Stories is an experimental graphic novel packaged as a box containing 14 separate printed works—booklets, pamphlets, newspapers, and fold-outs—that can be read in any order. The collection chronicles the lives of residents in a Chicago apartment building, with a focus on an unnamed woman living with loneliness, regret, and disability. Other inhabitants include a couple struggling with their relationship, an elderly landlady, and even the building itself as a silent observer. Ware’s meticulous art and narrative design highlight themes of alienation, memory, and the passage of time. The nonlinear format encourages readers to assemble meaning from fragments, echoing the way life itself is experienced in pieces rather than neat sequences. Building Stories is celebrated as a landmark in formal experimentation, combining Ware’s signature melancholy with an ambitious rethinking of how stories can be told through comics.