Despite quite a few plots unfolding at the same time, the author manages to keep all his balls in the air at once and never...
A grand family saga, played out over several centuries, continents, and oceans, from novelist and nature writer Wright (A Scientific Romance, 1998, etc.).
In April 1990, Olivia Wyvern writes to the daughter she placed for adoption years ago of the events that led to her incarceration in Tahiti. Liv’s father, an RAF pilot who served in the Korean War, disappeared during a mission over the Yalu; his family lived ever after in a state of emotional suspended animation. As a young woman, Liv was so desperate for news of her father that she even allowed herself to be seduced by an imposter who claimed to have come upon evidence of his fate—which is why she gave up the resulting baby. Sorting out the old family house after her mother died, Liv discovered a journal written by the previous owner, a childless relation who spent much of his life abroad as a naval officer. The journal, she states, reveals “the wheel of cause and effect, set in motion by Frank Henderson, which has rolled down upon our lives through a century.” It relates Henderson’s adventures at sea and on land, foremost among them being the three years he spent aboard the HMS Bacchante in the company of two royals: dissolute Prince Eddy, grandson of Queen Victoria and heir presumptive to the throne, and his younger brother Prince George, who in fact became King George V in 1910. The story from Henderson’s pages is framed by Liv’s own, more private drama. She’s in Tahiti searching for the truth behind her father’s disappearance when she’s arrested on bogus murder and espionage charges. Then she receives word of her long-lost daughter. It never rains but it pours—in Britain and the South Seas, at least.
Despite quite a few plots unfolding at the same time, the author manages to keep all his balls in the air at once and never lets the pace lag. Well done indeed.Pub Date: March 5, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6996-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
The second volume in Giardinos poignant graphic narrative of growing up under Communist rule in postwar Prague lives up to the clean elegance of its first (rev. 5/1/97). Giardino's beautiful background art of Prague architecture contrasts with the sad tale in the foreground: a young man's tortured adolescence made worse by having his father imprisoned as an enemy of the state. The rush of events, both personal and political, flash by in near-wordless frames: Jonas, kicked out of school, gets a job in construction; Stalin dies; Jonas finds better work in a bookstore; the Czech ministry renews its campaign against counter-revolutionaries. The humanity of everyday Czechs is apparent in the sympathetic faces drawn with perfection by Giardino, from the beery plumber, Slavek, to the kindly bookstore owner, Pinkel. Jonas's self-pity reveals itself when he falls for a pretty girl, herself part of a group of young people who read forbidden books for sheer ``mental survival.'' Visually compelling and historically resonant, Giardino's full- color narrative is evolving into a masterwork of its kind.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56163-197-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The first volume in a longer graphic novel, Giardino's tale of Communist oppression in Prague after the war recalls the best fictional and nonfictional accounts of life under Stalinism in Eastern Europe—the Kafkaesque bureaucracies, the betrayal of friendships, the constant presence of Big Brother, the unofficial anti-Semitism. Giardino captures all this in a style American readers will recognize from the pages of Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal), in which such draftsmanship usually serves soft-core porn and tales of the fantastic. Giardino's realism features some lovely evocations of Prague, but the story never develops a style uniquely suited to its subject (which was the marvel of Spiegelman's Maus). Some of his silent panels best capture the terror of one family as it struggles to survive while the father is lost in the labyrinthine penal system. Still, this is a project worth watching if yet another fine comic artist proves that a medium long associated with kids can handle the most serious of topics.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-56163-180-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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