A light, breezy mystery that will leave readers looking forward to the next episode.
Vermont private eye Jonathan Levy investigates the disappearance of a mysterious woman’s daughter in Norman’s third graphic novel in a series, illustrated by Bakst.
Levy begins this episode by visiting his partner Alexa Sands’ gallery collection of 22 photographs, all taken on the same day and featuring the same elegant, older woman sitting in the background; Sands has no idea who she is. By the show’s end, all the photos have sold but one of war brides arriving on a steamship in Halifax in 1938, which Sands claims isn’t her own. Levy and Sands decide to call the number on the photo and are surprisingly connected to the aforementioned older woman: “I am at the inn at Montpelier, Room 105. My name is Bettina Eldersveld. I am Dutch by birth.” It turns out that she has a case for Levy, who’s a Montpelier-based private detective: She wants to know what happened to her daughter, with whom she hasn’t had any contact in 45 years; the only clue she has is a postcard. Alongside this central mystery is the story of the developing relationship between Levy and Sands, who are engaged to be married. In this volume, Sands introduces him to another aspect of her life: séances. She won’t get married, she says, until she has approval from the spirit world. Somewhat oddly inserted into all of this is the abrupt appearance of scenes from Veronica Lake movies; it’s eventually revealed that there’s a film festival in town, and Sands feels some sort of spiritual connection with the actor. This aspect of Norman’s series entry never fully coheres with the rest of the work, and the actual detective work on display is brief to the point of lacking adequate suspense. However, there’s a soft, gentle, and playful tone to the work that will appeal to readers looking for a nontraditional detective story. Bakst’s painterly grayscale artwork is likewise low-key, with smudged edges that give most pages an expressionistic look.
A light, breezy mystery that will leave readers looking forward to the next episode.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781578691807
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced...
A pairing of the text of the Scottish Play with a filmed performance, designed with the Shakespeare novice in mind.
The left side of the screen of this enhanced e-book contains a full version of Macbeth, while the right side includes a performance of the dialogue shown (approximately 20 lines’ worth per page). This granular focus allows newcomers to experience the nuances of the play, which is rich in irony, hidden intentions and sudden shifts in emotional temperature. The set and costuming are deliberately simple: The background is white, and Macbeth’s “armor” is a leather jacket. But nobody’s dumbing down their performances. Francesca Faridany is particularly good as a tightly coiled Lady Macbeth; Raphael Nash-Thompson gives his roles as the drunken porter and a witch a garrulousness that carries an entertainingly sinister edge. The presentation is not without its hiccups. Matching the video on the right with the text on the left means routinely cutting off dramatic moments; at one point, users have to swipe to see and read the second half of a scene’s closing couplet—presumably an easy fix. A “tap to translate” button on each page puts the text into plain English, but the pop-up text covers up Shakespeare’s original, denying any attempts at comparison; moreover, the translation mainly redefines more obscure words, suggesting that smaller pop-ups for individual terms might be more meaningful.
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced e-book makes the play appealing and graspable to students . (Enhanced e-book. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The New Book Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
A Rand primer with pictures.
A graphic novel for devotees of Ayn Rand.
With its men who have become gods through rugged individualism, the fiction of Ayn Rand has consistently had something of a comic strip spirit to it. So the mating of Rand and graphic narrative would seem to be long overdue, with her 1938 novella better suited to a quick read than later, more popular work such as The Fountainhead (1943) and the epic Atlas Shrugged (1957). As Anthem shows, well before the Cold War (or even World War II), Rand was railing against the evils of any sort of collectivism and the stifling of individualism, warning that this represented a return to the Dark Ages. Here, her allegory hammers the point home. It takes place in the indeterminate future, a period after “the Great Rebirth” marked an end of “the Unmentionable Times.” Now people have numbers as names and speak of themselves as “we,” with no concept of “I.” The hero, drawn to stereotypical, flowing-maned effect by illustrator Staton, knows himself as Equality 7-2521 and knows that “it is evil to be superior.” A street sweeper, he stumbles upon the entrance to a tunnel, where he discovers evidence of scientific advancement, from a time when “men knew secrets that we have lost.” He inevitably finds a nubile mate. He calls her “the Golden One.” She calls him “the Unconquered.” Their love, of course, is forbidden, and not just because she is 17. After his attempt to play Prometheus, bringing light to a society that prefers the dark, the two escape to the “uncharted forest,” where they are Adam and Eve. “I have my mind. I shall live my own truth,” he proclaims, having belatedly discovered the first-person singular. The straightforward script penned by Santino betrays no hint of tongue-in-cheek irony.
A Rand primer with pictures.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-23217-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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