A modernized Macbeth for manga fans, but the Bard deserves better.
Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy gets an overlong Manga Classics series treatment.
This is a modern-language counterpart to the series’ 2018 manga adaptation of Macbeth that preserved the original text. Choy’s black-and-white manga-style artwork is crisp and dynamic, suiting the martial moments but also adeptly portraying characters’ internal struggles. The sharp lines and claustrophobic close-ups capture Macbeth’s journey from loyal liege to unhinged tyrant. Disappointingly, the less nuanced portrayal of Lady Macbeth relies on a literal interpretation of her lines. In a mostly successful attempt to illustrate and explain Elizabethan analogies, Macbeth’s abundant allusions, metaphors, and similes are translated into background imagery. Regrettably, the accompanying, modernized dialogue ultimately detracts from the retelling. The cadence and language of the original text is lost, sacrificed for an unappealing blend of stilted formal English and clichéd phrases. Converting a Shakespearean play to a popular, visual, modern medium may attract new audiences otherwise daunted by archaic language, thick tomes, and impenetrable theatrical productions, but the new dialogue has its own biases and interpretations that may escape readers unfamiliar with other approaches to understanding the play. No Throne of Blood, the medieval-ish Scottish setting remains intact, and the characters read as White.
A modernized Macbeth for manga fans, but the Bard deserves better. (cast list, manga-reading instructions, character sketches, creators’ notes) (Graphic fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-947808-21-8
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Manga Classics
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2021
A wrenching, if logorrheic, epistolary portrait of a dysfunctional family.
Teenage sibs desperately search for ways to escape a toxic domestic situation.
When his big sister, Bea, disappears just two months before her Indiana high school graduation, leaving him without an ally at home against their passive aggressive mom and viciously abusive stepfather, 15-year-old Ezra oscillates between rage and terror—even after Bea emails that she’s (more or less) OK. Fortunately, Ezra can look to his boyfriend, Terrence, and other outside allies for support when the punishments and public scenes get to be too much. Bea has walled off everyone except her beloved little brother and has, it turns out, quixotically set out on a quest of her own…only to discover that their mother hasn’t been exactly straight about important elements of their family history. The authors frame this heartbreaking outing through emails of frequently monumental length and a relentless focus on either pep talks or event and relationship analysis. Perceptive readers who make it through the emotional wringer will encounter certain themes: that people and the reasons for what they do are rarely if ever simple; that adolescence can be scary but exhilarating (the solid, healthy bond between Ezra and Terrence being a case in point); and that seeing oneself clearly is a first step toward real change. Ultimately, Ezra and Bea come to understand that it’s better to be running toward the future than from the past. Ezra is White; Terrence is Black.
A wrenching, if logorrheic, epistolary portrait of a dysfunctional family. (authors’ note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-58099-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
A layered, empathetic examination of the ghosts inside all girls’ lives, full of historical realism and timeless feeling.
A ghost girl’s narration weaves her own story with that of a tenacious orphan in World War II–era Chicago.
Teenage Frankie’s story is no more or less tragic than that of any other young person at her German Catholic orphanage: That is, it’s heartbreaking. She and her two siblings have a father who brings them gifts but claims he can’t afford to take them home and who eventually abandons them for a new family. But Frankie’s tenacious grip on hope draws attention from both her fellow orphans, including a beautiful, gentle boy with whom she shares an illicit prewar romance, and Pearl, the book’s ghost narrator, whose own tragic story slowly unfurls alongside Frankie’s. Pearl’s narration elevates an already-poignant story to a complex, bittersweet examination of why “girls were punished so hard for their love, so hard, hard enough to break them.” There is no escape from pain or death in this narrative—from the wolf waiting behind every door—but there is the suggestion that it’s worth the risk to open them all wide anyway. Pearl and Frankie are white (Frankie’s parents were Italian immigrants), but many secondary characters, memorably an African American ghost named Marguerite and a Chinese love interest for Pearl, are racially diverse.
A layered, empathetic examination of the ghosts inside all girls’ lives, full of historical realism and timeless feeling. (author’s note) (Historical fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-231764-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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