#1 The Arrival
Jan. 24th, 2009 08:33 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
eccentricweft.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_pocThe Arrival was published in 2006 and I just stumbled on it recently. It's a wordless graphic novel. The medium is (I think) charcoal pencil drawings.
The artist is Shaun Tan, from Australia. His father was Chinese and came to Australia as an adult. The project was inspired by the father's experiences: it's about leaving home, coming to a completely unfamiliar place, and gradually figuring out the strangeness of the new culture.
The story uses fantastical elements to convey the bizarreness of everything to the new arrival (the cover illustration is an example, so I don't think this spoils anything). It's not meant as science fiction but rather as a way of making the 'reader' feel as baffled by the new surroundings as the main character.
The fact that this complex story is told completely without words is amazing to me. It's incredibly absorbing and the absence of words makes you have to pay attention as intently as the main character.
I'd love to talk about this with folks if anyone else has read it.
The artist is Shaun Tan, from Australia. His father was Chinese and came to Australia as an adult. The project was inspired by the father's experiences: it's about leaving home, coming to a completely unfamiliar place, and gradually figuring out the strangeness of the new culture.
The story uses fantastical elements to convey the bizarreness of everything to the new arrival (the cover illustration is an example, so I don't think this spoils anything). It's not meant as science fiction but rather as a way of making the 'reader' feel as baffled by the new surroundings as the main character.
The fact that this complex story is told completely without words is amazing to me. It's incredibly absorbing and the absence of words makes you have to pay attention as intently as the main character.
I'd love to talk about this with folks if anyone else has read it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-25 08:39 pm (UTC)The other of his I've read was The Rabbits, with John Marsden, which I decided was the biggest case of jacket-copy false advertising I'd ever seen! It was good (and in a totally different cool illustration style), but the cover flap said the message was all environmentalist, which was FAR from true -- there was a strong condemnation of colonialism as well. I certainly didn't object, but the dishonesty was really striking.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 12:10 am (UTC)My Pollyanna-ish side wants to think that might have been an attempt to get people to read the book that might not have otherwise, but yeah. I'm inclined to think it was a marketing decision.
Pondering that makes me wonder why the environmental angle was perceived as more saleable. Maybe because it has arisen more recently and people think of it as not totally irresolvable, whereas colonialism is thought of as a situation where the worst damage has already been done so now all we can do is hide our heads in shame.