TRUMPETS OF DEATH

A boy’s unhappy visit with his grandparents in the French countryside turns very dark in this translated graphic-novel import.

When Antoine’s mother leaves their home, his father unceremoniously drops him off with his grandparents while he sorts things out. Antoine’s fussbudget grandmother tries to engage with Antoine, but his grandfather, an avid hunter whose trophies festoon the home’s interior, is openly, sometimes terrifyingly hostile. One day, while reluctantly foraging with his grandfather, Antoine picks a mysterious white mushroom and finds himself transformed into a white deer. Bournel-Bosson’s precise, realistic linework captures Antoine’s loneliness with panel compositions that isolate him or emphasize his diminutive stature. The palette rotates among two-color combinations: Yellow and blue give way to mauve and yellow, then green and yellow, and so on. These color shifts combine with closeups that approach the grotesque to give the tale an air of the weird even before Antoine’s transformation. This metamorphosis brings Antoine moments of fear and of tremendous beauty before a resolution that’s both just and profoundly unsettling. Readers will note that the mushroom that triggers Antoine’s change is not the edible trompette de la mort (commonly known in English as the black trumpet or black chanterelle). The literal translation of the original title gives the English-language edition an appropriately sinister feel its French readers might not experience. Antoine and his family present white; his behavior and build mark him a preteen.

An unsettling, thought-provoking coming of age.