Building Stories is a 2012
graphic novel by American cartoonist
Chris Ware. The unconventional work is made up of fourteen printed works—cloth-bound books, newspapers,
broadsheets and
flip books—packaged in a boxed set. The work took a decade to complete, and was published by
Pantheon Books. The intricate, multilayered stories pivot around an unnamed female protagonist with a missing leg. It mainly focuses on her time in a three-story
brownstone apartment building in
Chicago, but follows her later in her life as a mother. The parts of the work can be read in any order.