A well-imagined adventure coupled with striking black-and-white imagery.
The world is torn into radically divergent societies after the economy collapses in Renzella and Weiss’ stark graphic novel debut.
In the near future, the Earth’s fuel reserves will run out within a decade, but the discovery of a new energy resource promises fuel for the next 75 years. Environmental activists who oppose the corporation Petrolol’s essentially strip-mining this resource from Earth are elated about a second discovery of a clean power source. But the announcement of this find has detrimental results—Petrolol is rendered worthless, which, in a peculiar turn, causes the economy to crash. Many people become homeless and experience violent storms and a mysterious virus. The world ultimately splits into diverse groups that seem to be on the brink of war. Scientists conduct experiments in the Towers; the military hides away in subterranean bunkers; and worshippers of the Earth goddess, Pachamama, isolate themselves in eco-domes. The military has a mole embedded in the latter group (often called “the Hippies”) while also infiltrating followers of Serin Civetta, a zealot who’s convinced many that reptilian aliens are behind Earth’s devastation. But aliens are just one possible explanation of the sudden appearance of two new towers that soar above the existing Towers. Or they may be, as the military surmises, weapons. The tale is a scathing commentary on societal divides, whether politically or religiously motivated. Much of the narrative occurs as flashbacks, with events leading to what’s known as the Schism. As this is Volume 1, months preceding the Schism are left unexplored, while a gleefully perplexing conclusion sets the stage for proposed later installments. Despite text unaccompanied by word balloons, strong, distinctive dialogue makes it easy to comprehend who’s speaking each line. Nevertheless, the book’s most accomplished feature is Renzella’s unique woodcut illustrations. Broad, bold lines still manage nuance, including clear facial expressions, while thoroughly filling pages with artwork.
A well-imagined adventure coupled with striking black-and-white imagery.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-986-91676-0-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lei Press
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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