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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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