Boldly meditative and enriching.
Across the main title story and three shorter stories, artist and graphic novelist Koch contemplates nature and relationships via sparse, impressionistic art and laconic narration and dialogue.
In the title story, an unnamed woman visits her friend Lise and Lise’s partner, Yann, at Yann’s ancestral home in the woods; Yann is constructing a lake house near a rough-hewn monolith that dates back millennia. The woman and Lise share a playfully teasing relationship, hinting at a deep familiarity and affection while bantering along the edges of uncomfortable topics like tension between Lise and Yann and the woman’s plan to begin work at a distant farm in order to reclaim her life after a challenging period. The story flows along atmospherically and languidly, intercutting and contrasting nonfigurative organic imagery (particularly chunky blue curves of flowing water) with rigid lines and grids that imply the structure of human endeavor. White space dominates the pages, the emptiness amplifying bright splashes of watercolor, dabs and slabs of earth tones, and the striking visages of Koch’s characters. Koch gorgeously captures the poignancy of facial expressions (anchored by soulful eyes and wriggled brows) and the poetry of a body’s pose. This keen eye for kinesiology runs through all four stories, most notably in “Man Made Lake,” where a jumble of shapes and collage quickly coalesces into a series of bifurcated pages containing a pair of humanoid silhouettes stretching and moving, seemingly in response to each other, before transforming into fish and water. The interrelation between humanity and nature is central to the work and explained at length in an afterword from editor Nicole Rudick that serves as a museum placard to Koch’s impressionistic work.
Boldly meditative and enriching.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781681378350
Page Count: 208
Publisher: New York Review Comics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.
During an annual beach vacation, a mother confronts her past and learns to move forward.
Her family’s annual trip to Cape Cod is always the highlight of Rocky’s year—even more so now that her children are grown and she cherishes what little time she gets with them. Rocky is deep in the throes of menopause, picking fights with her loving husband and occasionally throwing off her clothes during a hot flash, much to the chagrin of her family. She’s also dealing with her parents, who are crammed into the same small summer house (with one toilet that only occasionally spews sewage everywhere) and who are aging at an alarmingly rapid rate. Rocky’s life is full of change, from her body to her identity—she frequently flashes back to the vacations of years past, when her children were tiny. Although she’s grateful for the family she has, she mourns what she’s lost. Newman (author of the equally wonderful We All Want Impossible Things, 2022) imbues Rocky’s internal struggles with importance and gravity, all while showcasing her very funny observations about life and parenting. She examines motherhood with a raw honesty that few others manage—she remembers the hard parts, the depths of despair, panic, and anxiety that can happen with young children, and she also recounts the joy in a way that never feels saccharine. She has a gift for exploring the real, messy contradictions in human emotions. As Rocky puts it, “This may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel.”
A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780063345164
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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