New Century Reading

Glass Town

This lovely graphic novel is the story of the wondrous Bronte family, they of the three famous writing sisters. Besides writing such amazing books as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, they spent much of their childhood writing epic tales in fantasy lands called Gondal and Glass Town. Isabel Greenberg has done a great job of incorporating both the fantasy tales and the real-world lives of the sisters, especially Charlotte, who at one point was living away from Haworth and working as a governess and became obsessed with continuing to write her Glass Town tales. 

So, yes, I really enjoyed the book, and the artwork has a prickly excitement to it that matches the story. But I've read a fair amount about the Brontes (much of it this year) and all of their novels, multiple times. I'm familiar enough with their juvenile writings, and their disastrous careers as governesses. I have to wonder how someone without that background would like this book. It might seem incomprehensible. Which is not to say it's not worth reading, just that it'll make much more sense and be more enjoyable if you have some solid Bronte foundation going in.

Snow, Glass, Apples

Snow, Glass, Apples is a graphic novel released this year, 25 years after its source material was printed as a limited-edition chapbook by Minnesota's Dreamhaven Books. I wasn't aware of the earlier edition, but a friend saw me post the title for #FridayReads and offered to let me read her copy. 

The book is a retelling of Snow White from the point of view of the evil stepmother who, in Gaiman's version, is not so evil after all. In fact, it's Snow White who is the formidable opponent with no scruples. The stepmother doesn't spend time asking magic mirrors to say who's the fairest in the kingdom, but uses a mirror for scrying, especially as to the location and doings of her terrifying stepdaughter. 

First of all, I really enjoyed the re-visioning Gaiman does here. He truly turns the fairy tale upside down (and I did go back and read the original Grimm's version for a comparison that's not Disney-fied). Note: This is not at all a children's book--besides the violence and evil, there's fairly explicit sex, clearly detailed in the graphic artwork by the talented Colleen Doran. So don't put this under the Christmas tree for your seven-year-old.

To me, what ended up being interesting was comparing the two editions. The new graphic edition is lush and colorful, with palettes changing from page to page to reflect the tone and characters. The chapbook has only the cover artwork and one drawing inside, in black-and-white (by Charles Vess):

Yet I preferred the chapbook. The simplicity of the chapbook format seemed more in keeping with the fairy tales I read as a child (in a big anthology with few illustrations), and kept the focus more on the story. In contrast, the graphic novel seemed to minimize the text in favor of the illustrations, almost to the point of distraction. That, obviously, could be just me--your mileage may vary. Either way, if you like reinvented fairy tales, this is a good one. 

Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Novel

I was intrigued when I learned that there was a graphic novel version of the Diary of Anne Frank out there. I've long been a fan of the original diary, and in recent years found even more to admire when I read Francine Prose's amazing book, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. A graphic version seemed like a logical continuation (although I don't love that they use the word "novel"--why not just "graphic diary" or something like that?).

The editor and illustrator worked together to find the best way to re-create the diary in an illustrated form (and, apparently, there's an animated movie coming too). It wasn't feasible to use the entire diary, so they had to use excerpts. The excerpts are beautifully selected to give a full sense of Anne's range: Her fears, her anger, her self-introspection, her maturing through the teen years, her growing awareness of her own sexuality, her problems with her family and the other members of the Secret Annex, her awareness of what was happening to Jews. There are parts that are funny, parts that are heartbreaking.

And the illustrations are just lovely. This one comes early in the book, when Anne receives the diary for her birthday and christens it Kitty, the friend she can truly be herself with:

And this one, showing her many facets:

I loved this. It would serve equally well as an introduction for someone who hasn't read the diary--giving them enough of a taste to understand the story and, hopefully, want to read the full diary--as well as a complementary piece for people like me who have read the diary many times. It brings Anne Frank to life in a new way.

Literary Witches

Well, this is a charmer. Author Taisia Kitaiskaia and illustrator Katy Horan created what they call a celebration of magical women writers. Each writer gets a witchly description ("Enchantress of bitter love, treachery, and jewels"), followed by a brief tale that's essentially a magical bio, then a short real bio and suggestions of works to read. Each is accompanied by an illustration of the real woman, but rooted in something akin to fairy tales or, in some cases, an almost Frida Kahlo-esque interpretation.

The range of chosen writers is pleasingly wide and diverse. There are well-known writers, like Flannery O'Connor and Virginia Woolf; ancient writers like Sappho; many women who are not white Americans; new-to-me writers like Yumiko Kurahashi, a Japanese experimental writer described as producing works that include ghosts, flying heads, witch masks, incest, and bestiality. Why, yes, I'd like to check her out. International writers are well represented and introduced me to other names I wasn't familiar with, but do plan to check out.

That said, there are some factual inaccuracies in the areas that are supposed to be literal. A friend noticed that Mary Wollstonecraft is reported in this book to have died during childbirth, when she actually died several weeks later. I noticed that in Virginia Woolf's bio, she's listed as childfree and sexually liberated, both presented as her being a feminist and ahead of her time. However, I'm in the midst of reading her journals (so wonderful) and it's clear that while she's childfree, and it's by choice, it's not a choice she's altogether happy about; her doctors and husband both demanded that she not undergo motherhood because of her mental health issues. In her diaries, she notes several times how wistful visiting her nieces and nephews makes her and occasionally ponders what life would have been like with children. Would she have been able to produce her masterpieces? Who knows? But to simply present her as a feminist who was childfree by choice is losing the context that's a bit melancholy and not as celebratory.

However, these are nitpicks. Read the book with a grain of salt and more for the witchly parts and wonderful illustrations rather than hard-core facts. Then seek out the writers you're not familiar with and be thankful someone introduced you to them.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book One

Well, this one knocked me over. I thought from the title, and the initial glance I took at the interior, that it was a fun graphic novel about monsters and the horror genre. And it is, but it's so, so, so much more than that. 

Karen Reyes is a young girl in early 1960s Chicago who loves monsters. Loves them. Wants to be one. She's also a budding artist, so she spends copious amounts of time drawing in notebooks, including figures of herself as a monster in training (and also, sometimes, a detective, kind of in the Harriet the Spy tradition). She lives with her older brother, Deeze, and her mother in a basement apartment, and she's a reasonably happy kid.

Reasonably. Until (and this happens early on, so not really a spoiler) her upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, is found dead of a gunshot wound in her locked apartment. Anka was not regarded as entirely sane by the neighbors, but she was thought to be harmless; but after her death, as people try to figure out how she ended up dead in a manner not consistent with suicide, Karen learns about Anka's past as a Holocaust survivor. 

Karen also learns more about the people around her, including Anka's husband, the local mob connections, the kids at her school, and even her own family. Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, and not all monsters are horrible, even if they do or say horrific things at times.

I can't even begin to describe how gorgeous the illustrations are in this book. Each page is lined like your basic student notebook, but the drawings are intense, striking, frightening, and sad. The stories told in this book could have been told in a conventional novel with no illustrations, and likely they would still have had an impact, but combining them with these sumptuous artworks just makes the book even more gripping.

Apparently Book Two is coming out later this year. I can't wait.

Here

This book, people. This book. It's a deceptively simple concept: A graphic novel that traces (circuitously) the life of a house. Specifically, the life of one room--one corner of that room. From its prehistoric roots to its future beyond today, and everything in between, from the American Revolution to the 1950s to the present time. Sometimes--often--multiple years almost collide:

But not always this happily. This book brings the reader in as an insider, and yet also as an outsider; we're missing critical information--who are these people? What's happening? What happened to the older stories? How many people lived here?

That, I think, is the point. A house is not just a house, a room not just a room, but a repository of history that's otherwise uncollected. It's up to the reader to create stories for these families, these people, young and old. The illustrations are almost gauzy, as if fading in time themselves. And watch the flower vases. 

After reading this, I was driving in a rural area and saw an abandoned house, and it really caught my attention. Who lived there? Where did they do? Why did no one else live there? A simple concept, but beautifully done, and thought-provoking.

Saga Volumes 1 and 2

Saga Vol. 1 opens with a woman giving birth, and it's quickly established that she and her husband are a space-age Romeo and Juliet, each descended from a long line of the other's enemies. But unlike the classical teens, Alana and Marko are fiercely committed to staying alive and protecting their newborn daughter against the longest of odds. It takes very little time before forces who oppose them (and there are many) begin to search for them, and there are numerous close calls involving freelance assassins, who themselves have been put into competition with each other--and with whom there are some intriguing past stories as well.

Continuing into Vol. 2, the battle for survival continues with a teenage girl ghost who lost the lower half of her body and has ghostly entrails hanging out and Marko's parents. 

That is just the most basic outline of these two books, the first of many, but let me tell you this: I was sucked into the story, wham bang, with the first page of volume 1, tore through volume 2, and am impatiently checking my library queue several times a day to see if volumes 3 and 4 have arrived for me yet. Author Brian K. Vaughan not only tells a fast-paced, engrossing story, he also manages to develop characters as the action continues nonstop. We get to know Alana and Marko very well, with all their flaws, and we grow increasingly committed to standing by them. But it's not just the leads who are fleshed out--we learn about the royalty overseeing the lengthening wars, the freelance assassins, the ghosts--they all have stories and three-dimensional personalities.

But what also helps is the artwork by Fiona Staples. She's wildly creative and has a fantastic sense of how to flesh out these otherworldly creatures. Her illustrations are vivid, eye-catching, and an absolutely integral part of the story.

Note that these are very much adult comic books--the F bomb drops multiple times, there's a ton of blood (yes, it's illustrated blood, but still), and graphic (no pun intended) sex scenes. But for the grownups who like a ripping good yarn, like sci fi and fantasy, and like well-drawn characters (again, no pun intended), this is a must.

The Best We Could Do

Wow. I hardly know where to start with how much I loved this book. I read it in one sitting--not difficult for a graphic memoir, granted, but it's very compelling. 

This is the story of Thi Bui's family, who escaped Vietnam by boat in the 1970s and became refugees in Malaysia before making their way to America. That right there is plenty to chew on; witnessing the horrors of the Vietnam war firsthand, taking on a dangerous escape because there was no other choice--they were likely to die or "disappear" if they didn't--and going through the miseries of the refugee life, then the poverty-stricken immigrant life in a country where many resented them because of their roots in Vietnam.

But it's more than that. It's also the story of Thi Bui's parents, who at first seem like run-of-the-mill stereotypical dysfunctional parents. But the author took on the task of trying to understand them, what made them the way they are, and she dug deep. Certainly life in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s played a huge role, but that wasn't all. And who her parents were had an effect on who the author became--as is true for all of us.

Bui frames the book around the birth of her child, which could have been hokey, but by using it as the jumping-off point to exploring her parents, she manages to avoid becoming trite. Instead, this is a heartfelt look at her parents and her relationship with them, with all its faults and unfulfilled hopes. And isn't that something nearly all of us can understand, even if we didn't become Vietnamese refugees in the 70s?

The illustrations are beautiful too. The drawings are founded in black-and-white drawings, with gentle shadings of color. It's hard to imagine this book having the emotional impact it does without them. 

Five stars.

Snotgirl

I was a big fan of the Scott Pilgrim series back in the day, so I was excited to see that Bryan Lee O'Malley had something new. Co-authored with Leslie Hung, the storyline sounded deliciously arch: Snotgirl is a popular fashion blogger who suffers from extreme allergies, something she worries will hurt her brand (I mean, when have red eyes and green stuff coming out of your nose ever made you fashionable?). But when her allergist takes a leave and she has to see someone new, he gives her an experimental medication that helps, but has some very odd side effects, and now she's not sure if she committed a murder or not.

Fun and campy, right? I love that on the back cover of the book, right above the ISBN and price, is this categorization: 

Contemporary fantasy/romance/fashion/comedy/anxiety/INFP

Awesome.

But.

I know this is the first of a series--"Vol. 1" is prominently displayed on the cover--but geez, it's nearly all set up. And very slow set up at that. We get Snotgirl (the nickname is bestowed upon her by a new friend) bewailing her physical health, her lack of really good friends, her ex-boyfriend having dumped her. Again. And again, and again, and again. There are some hints of storylines to come, but for goodness sake, why not give us a little more in the first round? My first reaction was, to heck with it. But realistically, I liked Scott Pilgrim enough to continue onto the next volume of this. But that one better deliver.

My Depression

Treating the topic of depression via a picture book may seem like an odd choice, but it works. Author and illustrator Elizabeth Swados has battled the black dog (now, I have a literal black dog, and she doesn't depress me at all, but I get the metaphor) long enough to understand its forms and what it takes to deal with it. Her illustrations are rough and crazy:

But, at least in my experience, illustrate very well what it's like to sink into a depression. She also details her journey to control it, a journey that anyone who's suffered from depression will recognize, even though everyone's path is different in that regard. 

I think this would be a great gift for anyone who's just beginning to understand that they are depressed and feeling helpless and alone. My one quibble is that the book kind of rushes through its ending--I wish she would have slowed that part down a bit and explored a little more. Still, in terms of explaining the ins and outs of depression, and how it can affect people (including those around the depressed person), this is a great primer.