Graphic novel that reads like a memoir- but I’m not sure if it is. Kind of hope it’s fiction, because of a huge family secret revealed at the end (by an unreliable narrator- the old man who spilled the beans was senile and mistook the young man he was talking to for someone else in the family, or he might not have told the story). If the stories in here are true, based on real people, I’d think it kind of awful to find out this kind of thing by reading it in a book written by a relative!
Anyhow, the premise is that the main character, Ramiro, travels from London to Costa Rica to visit older relatives whom he hasn’t seen in many many years. He takes along a box of old photographs, hoping to use them to jar people’s memories and collect family stories. In most cases he meets with just one or two family members, but at the end there’s a gathering of half a dozen folks, with someone showing old family videos and everyone talking about who’s who and who did what, and sharing anecdotes. That’s it, a bunch of family stories told in bits and pieces. There’s no real narrative arc, unless it’s of this young man learning more about his family’s past, and piecing together the story about the family secret. Most of the stories center around two brothers who loved the same woman. About one man in the family who shamed everyone else by drinking too much, and a gentleman who thought too much of his clothes. But honestly, it was kind of underwhelming and a bit difficult to follow. A lot of the faces looked all the same (I know, family resemblance, but still)- all the eyebrows the same shape, nothing much to distinguish them. It was hard for me to remember who was who and how they were related, even when a family tree was shared halfway through the book. Sometimes the pages show what’s happening in a story from the past, but most of the time it was speech bubbles superimposed over spreads of black-and-white photos (drawings of them of course) as if you were looking over the character’s shoulders at the photos while they talked. The photos show the relatives standing around or posing. Not doing anything. Half the time the poses in the drawn photos had nothing or little to do with the story being related, or I couldn’t even tell who the individuals were. So for that reason it was a tad boring. I appreciate that this was someone sharing their family stories, or a novel about how they uncovered their family stories- but I felt it could have been executed a bit better.
Also, the drawings bothered me. The people all have four-fingered hands and in about half of the pictures, there’s no defined elbow- joints are just a smooth transition, like noodles. I know it was a stylistic choice, but I found it visually uncomfortable for some reason. For what it’s worth, I showed some pages to my thirteen-year-old, who just shrugged: “its a style!” and didn’t find it odd or unsettling at all. So I guess that’s just me, but I couldn’t get away from the nagging sense of noticing those details in every picture the whole way through.
Borrowed from the public library.
