Notes on a Gift Guide: A Graphic Wrap-up

This isn’t really a best of but it certainly is an honourable mention of a few books that I haven’t been able to write about yet on this blog, just even for my own sake. So here goes.

Gipi is an Italian graphic novelist, a massively award winning, critically acclaimed virtuoso, which at first I wasn’t sure I believed since his art at first glance seems so messy.  I found a couple of his books at the library so scooped em up, they looked like quick reads. The volumes I grabbed were Notes for a War Story and Garage Band.  Each was a tightly plotted little volume, just over 110 pages each,  just enough of a story that reads like a short novel. It was surprising actually what he managed to do in so few pages, and I think it has a lot to do with how well he focuses on his characters. Each book follows  a group of boys, three or four in each case, with one central narrator driving the story. Gipi’s art is shaky lines and watercolours, reminding me a lot of Graham Roumieu’s stuff. But through this seemingly rough cartooning you get a range of expressiveness and emotions painted across each of his characters distinct faces, that packs layers of meaning into each panel.  Notes For a War Story used this to show the a group of teenagers in a nameless country, who get sucked into a gang that profits from the violent times. Garage Band is simpler, telling exactly that, how four friends get a chance to form a band over one summer, which leads to some brilliant soundless rocking.

But what most impressed me again is how in so few pages, the author manages to ratchet things up continually. The stakes keep getting higher, the characters keep facing bigger challenges. Their worlds are expanded. And it all hangs on who they are, and how they change when faced with real problems. Yeah, they’re all dissatisified young men, but how they react in each is what makes these books worthy of the name ‘novel’.  It helps in each I think that it focused on a relatively small number of characters, each experiencing the same or at least similar difficulties, whether its a war-zone, family difficulties, or the end of their jam-space. And in these moments of conflict, we can clearly see how they react differently, what pushes and pulls them apart. Makes for great drama. Keeps you turning pages. Ace.

How to Succeed In Publishing

Have you seen this? Have you? It’s all you need to know about being a successful writer in the 21st century.

Clever writing. Sharp but simple editing. Funny and to the point. This is how it should be done.  But did it sell more books? Maybe not. Certainly made me notice the author though. Isn’t that enough?

Holiday Gift Guide

For all of you out there in holiday-land, I got one big recommendation for reading for you. This one comes courtesy of the rejected reviews department of Q&Q, but let me tell you, my invisible audience, that this is one you don’t want to miss. I saw it yesterday at the Indigo at the Eaton Center, and I was just reminded of how truly magical it was. Yes magical. Get it together and get it for the person you most want to read stories to. Cause you know, them suburbs. They are a weird and wonderful place.

Tales from Outer Suburbia

By Shaun Tan

Reviewed By Ian Daffern
Tales from Outer Suburbia arrives with a cover styled in the manila envelope of airmail. Once opened, a patchwork grab-bag of anecdotes is discovered, populated by endless bungalows, sidewalks and power-lines. However, in each of Tan’s stories, the iconography of the suburbs is mixed with the fantastic: water buffalos on empty lots, sea cows on lawns, and brightly painted intercontinental ballistic missiles populating backyards.

These fabulist stories are joined by beautiful pencil drawings, text collages and water colour renderings. Somewhere in-between short story collection and graphic novel, it’s a pleasing amalgam that uses the strengths of each form to catch a peculiar feeling: a sense of wonder in the every-day and comfort in the far-fetched and uncanny.

Suburbia is home to many families, so fittingly the narrators of each tale come to us in their different voices. Stories told by grandparents, children, mothers, brothers, husbands and wives, present imaginative recollections with the well-worn comfort of personal family lore.

Their stories offer a salve to the worst of suburbia, the consumerism and stifling blandness. The Nameless Holiday is a curious inversion of Christmas, in which families gather to leave their most precious possessions on their rooftops, waiting for a magical reindeer to arrive and scoop them away.

In The Water-Buffalo, the titular beast is consulted for advice, and provides the solution to every problem addressed by pointing in the right direction. No one marvels that he is indeed a water-buffalo in a vacant lot, only that he is right every time.

And then there is Eric, a tiny foreign exchange student (he sleeps in a teacup!).  Rather than dwelling on their guest’s size, the narrator focuses on her own quiet doubts as to whether he is enjoying his stay. However when Eric leaves, the family discovers in their pantry a magical surprise, a revelation told wholly through pictures. It’s this mix, and perfect tone that is hit throughout that makes Tales from Outer Suburbia a wonder, and perhaps a classic soon to be discovered.

For more, visit Shaun Tan’s site here.