Review: Gone To Amerikay by Derek McCulloch, Colleen Doran, Jose Villarrubia

I would call this one a tale often told, but told entertainingly.

While Gone To Amerikay doesn't release until early April it seems appropriate to talk about an Irish tale on St. Patrick's Day. As an imprint Vertigo means brightly colored and often slick commercially appealing work to me. Gone To Amerikay fits nicely into that target. Divided into three parts it takes Irish immigrants from 1870, 1960 and an Irish billionaire from today to tell a story anyone who's ever cued up a playlist of ballads could recognize. The book is strongest in all areas when it's dealing with the 1870's story of Ciara O'Dwyer. Focusing on the Gangs of New York era Five Points, the issue of anti-Irish bias is largely avoided. I really wanted more of this section, as Ciara lands in America ahead of a husband who may or may not arrive. Working a variety of jobs to keep her young daughter fed and safe, Ciara travels through different levels of New York society.

Gone To Amerikay's tales are told in unison, with the art serving to distinguish them on the page. This aspect of the book was so well done. Even without the visual cues of clothing it smoothly transitioned between the time periods. Colleen Doran has done some lovely things with the backgrounds, making the time register naturally. (I'd consider Gone to Amerikay for some of the panels alone.) In the 1960's we meet a folk musician named Johnny McCormack. His story is not quite as engaging as Ciara's, but it's a story we don't encounter in many graphic novels. The details work, the characters (Is that a John Barrowman inspiration I see there?) ring true. If the stories of 1870 and 1960 were tied together by a different thread, I think I'd like both much better. While the twist that knots them is also in keeping with classic ballads, it feels forced. I don't want to give away the story. Having enjoyed it, I hope you would as well. The connection between Ciara and Johnny is too easy for me. Making it requires the inclusion of the third, and least successful, time period. If those pages had been dedicated to more of Ciara and Johnny I'd have preferred it.

The advance copy reports that Lewis Healy, our modern day Irishman, will have a connection between himself and them revealed. That's a bit of a stretch. Lewis is a fan of McCormack's whose wife takes him through a Who Do You Think You Are style reveal of their times and places. You know those comics they used to hand out in the 70's telling you not to light forest fires? Or maybe the ones where a superhero stumps for RIF? The time spent with Lewis feels like that. It's not bad, and as a narrative thread it ties everything together while giving the author a way to move forward. The difficulty lies in it feeling like a commercial for the joys of genealogy. Lewis isn't important to the plot except as a conveyance for the readers. He's a Harlequin Presents piece of perfection with a loving wife who uses their well funded accounts to research a pet project for him. Unlike Johnny and Ciara,  there's nothing at stake for Lewis either emotionally or physically. I think Lewis would work better with a deeper investment, allowing the reader to invest in him.

Overall, I enjoyed Gone To Amerikay. Frequently I admired it. This is the sort of graphic novel that can easily slip through the market unnoticed. Commercial work tends to cause less of a splash than something perceived as indie or edgy. While not completely successful, I'd check it out. When it's working, it's as lovely as lovely gets.

Things You Should Listen To: Adelaide by Meg Myers

I don't do music reviews because if I started I would never get anything else done. Music and me, we have a deep personal relationship. Sometimes we hurt each other. It's hard to talk about. (Ok, not at all but that sounded deep and dramatic which is absolutely required for musical discussion.) Right. Just listen to Adelaide by Meg Myers (which you will love) and then go download her EP. Thank me when she's famous and you get to say "Oh, Myers? Right. I started with her when she was fronting that band..." which will totally be a lie, like people who say they bought Tori Amos as a metal head, but it will impress the gullible. Play Adelaide again. You know you want to.

Review: Third Grave Dead Ahead by Darynda Jones

I didn't like it.

I'm so incredibly disappointed by this that I can't think how to begin. I've been cheerleading the Charley Davidson series as the best thing to happen to light and ridiculous paranormal since Sookie Stackhouse. Third Grave Dead Ahead has me wondering if I will ever read another volume. Remember that moment in the Harper Connelly series where you realized Harris really was going all in on the pseudo incest? It's sort of like that. The abuse dynamics in Third Grave are turned way, way up. Intolerably hot. It's not even the sort of abuse dynamic where you can say "But he doesn't hit her!" because he does. He absolutely does. Then there's the painful info dumping. (If you want to hear 23 times that Charley bound Reyes into his corporeal form, then be my guest. Walk right past this review and get to reading.)

Everything you'd need to know for a book four can be extracted from book three and summarized into two sentences. The overall plot gets two sentences of advancement. Possibly one if I chose my words carefully. From the opening chapter to the last third of the book the story drags it's heels. Opening with a clown named Ronald (classic Charley but not an attention grabber) the reader is bogged down in multiple and lengthy asides recapping the prior two books. This is not an author who has grasped the delicate art of giving just enough to keep the new reader engaged without destroying the very soul of the established fan. Not even a little bit. So, strike one for Holy Info Dump, strike two for plodding pace (for the first 2/3) and strike three for abuse dynamics. Adding insult to injury is the final plot reveal.

Charley gets off on Reyes being the super bad boy son of Satan guy. Attempts are made at establishing triangles but it's always been clear that Charley is as hung up on Reyes as Bella is on Edward. He is the one boy in all the world for her. While Reyes was in a coma all the dire warnings from people that knew him better fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Charley had crazy incorporeal sex or was saved from imminent harm by her dark lover. (Can we take a second here for a PSA? I don't care how great the guy is in the sack, if people are telling you that you don't know him, that he isn't the guy you think he is, that he is bad news and the ultimate destroyer you better wake up to face some reality. Every damn time the news story starts with "She thought she understood his soul" and ends with caskets.) Ok, so Charley, banging Reyes. Reyes so misunderstood. Reyes so damaged. In this book Reyes is awake and angry at Charley. If she tries to sleep for even a second, she is instantly having "angry sex" or as I like to call it, rape. Her enjoyment is not her consent. If she was consenting, she'd be sleeping. Mainlining coffee for 14 days is not consent. Reyes claims she is raping him, as he cannot stop his actions. According to Reyes, Charley is totally asking for it, controlling his actions, and forcing him to come to her when she slumbers. He is angry at her for her actions in waking life, for her lack of knowledge of her supernatural side and her having nonconsensual sex with him. All of this is deeply problematic. Then he starts hurting her. Which she punishes him for by kissing someone else. FFS, really? He kidnaps her, threatens to kill her family (oh, but he doesn't MEAN it), knocks her out, blackens her eye, duct tapes her mouth, ties her, handcuffs her,  sets her up to be stalked and tortured by a crazed killer and tells her she brought it on herself. She's too attractive. She's too independent. She forces him to hurt her. The author tries to offset this by showing Reyes being horribly abused in childhood (after coming to earth seeking out Charley) and being badly injured when Charley naps (forcing him asleep as well). So when he is injured, it is her fault. When she is injured, it is her fault. Things are Charley's fault. All the time. How hot is that?

Right. Not at all.

Charley's response is to get angry and ... not much else. She still cries over him, she still obsesses over him, cusses him out and kisses a biker. She's so independent and self actualized! Charley has gone from interesting character to absolute victim. As always, Jones telegraphs her plot moves. Given that the Davidson books are WTF popcorn reads, I can't really fault her for that. I can fault her that one of those moves had me silently begging her to stop. I absolutely never use the phrase "jump the shark". I hate it. I hated the Happy Days episode it's based on, I hate the way it's used like salt on the salad of internet conversations. I loathe it. You know what I loathe more? The spoiler I'm about to reveal. Charley picks up a guardian. The angels of Heaven have sent her a Caretaker for protection against non-living beings. Yes, Charley gets a dead dog. A Rottweiler to be precise. Consider that shark well and truly jumped.

Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Warning: this is not an actual review.

In the event of an actual review, I would bitch about the content with supporting details. I might praise or gush over another aspect, again with supporting details. With a bestseller of this magnitude I'd probably not bother mentioning it at all unless I loved it more than it's mother.

Instead I offer you these facts. I picked Bossypants up in hardcover. It's in softcover now. I still haven't finished it. (We're not talking War & Peace here.) Unlike James Joyce, Fey uses punctuation with reasonable skill. The edition I have is in my native language. There is no reason for Bossypants to languish unfinished but it's content. I just don't care to read another page. I have given it several college tries (whatever that is, I think it involves beer kegs and vomit) yet failed. Parts of Fey's book strike me as classist. Parts of Fey's book struck me as racist. Precious little of it struck me as interesting or amusing. I've always enjoyed Tina Fey. I expected to enjoy Bossypants enough to preorder it. This is a book that one can judge by the cover. I thought the cover was odd, not as amusing as it intended and off putting. For me (and possibly me alone) the contents were the same. I'm giving up and sending it to the bin. If you were considering Bossypants I suggest your local library. Chances are good they've had a few copies donated.

Review: In The Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman

So, like I said, I went on a graphic novel kick. Having heard bad things about In The Shadow of no Towers I decided to try it out for myself.

Oh, Art.

Spiegelman is a brilliant artist but I begin to suspect that the strength of Maus was pairing him with what was ultimately someone else's narrative. When dealing with his own life Spiegelman tends to be claustrophobically interior. He doesn't require broader strokes of perspective for what he already knows. In The Shadow of No Towers could have been a brilliant book if he had been able to step back from the material. As a cathartic work the emotion represented is a fair representation of how a section of the population felt. As a graphic novel it fails. If the name wasn't on the cover, the work wouldn't be in the bookstore as stand alone content.

Using perhaps half a dozen pages Spiegelman focuses on very little. It's not that he is wrong in his emotion. That is how he felt. That is what he thought. But why do we care? Why is his inability to settle his mind of emotional importance to the reader? Without a narrative other than "9/11 made me feel crazy and I am angry at my government's response" there is no emotional connection. Further distancing the reader is the combination of styles. Drawing stylistically on pre 1920 news cartoons with a strong Crumb influence, Spiegelman confuses the casual reader. (I have a pretty deep knowledge of the history, so I understood what he was doing with it.) Most readers are going to scratch their heads and say WTF? I wish he had taken these iconic characters and assigned them roles if he felt it important to include them at all. Perhaps turning to these familiar images helped him gain the emotional distance he needed to work the strips. It's hard to say because the content is so slight. Refreshingly, this is a 9/11 concerned work that doesn't feel a need to demonize half the world. Regrettably, Spiegelman is in the inside job camp of conspiracy theory. (He eases off the throttle toward the end.) While Bush & Cheney certainly hijacked the attack for their own ends, focusing on hatred of them dilutes the power of what happened in New York. I did not leave the scant pages of In The Shadow of No Towers with a deeper understanding of anything. It makes me sad that I can't recommend it.

Review: Persepolis 2 The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

 Having talked about Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood I suppose I should address the sequel. Most people are going to read these two books in one volume. I almost wish they were not packaged together. While the story Marjane tells in this second section of her life is no less compelling it is less universal. 

In the first, Satrapi is a young child at the mercy of the forces around her. In the second she is a young adult making the sorts of bad choices many young adults make. Because she is in some control it is easier for the reader to judge her. In judging her the tale loses some of it's universal power. Where young Satrapi is grounded in her family, teenage Satrapi is lost. Her focus moves from the external to the internal. Having become an expatriate she is without family or culture to sustain her during some very formative years. She falls into self destructive habits that ultimately force her back to Iran. As much as Satrapi has changed (her parents don't recognize her) so too has her country. Now we are in an Iran Westerners feel comfortable with. Her struggles feel less immediate, there is a distance that one doesn't feel in The Story of a Childhood. I think the author is a remarkable woman and a remarkable talent. I am certain that some of the events she depicts so honestly in The Story of a Return haunt her to this day. It is to her immense credit that she neither excuses nor defends herself from reader censure. Satrapi reports her life and then stands beside it. 

In The Story of a Return Satrapi covers the drug years, the misguided love years, the years of finding herself in small rebellions that wouldn't have been open to a woman of a different class. She acknowledges her privileges and her limitations. Ultimately, like many displaced by war, the author realizes that she cannot live in her home country again. It is something often forgotten when we discuss immigrants. They are caught between worlds, having children that will always be slightly alien to them, trying to assimilate into a culture they didn't truly choose. When Germany unified all East Germans woke up in another country. The streets were the same, the neighbors were the same, but their home was forever gone. No matter how much they longed for freedom, that is a massive adjustment one can only imperfectly make. I hope there is, or will be, a third volume of Persepolis (The Story of Exile?) covering these years for Satrapi. She has had great success in her adopted country but I wonder what the cost was. 

Review: Persepolis, The Story of A Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Last night I was discussing Habibi and it's affection for rape. Passages of Habibi put me in mind of contrasting passages from Persepolis. There is a scene with Satrapi's mother early in the revolution. she is accosted by a group of young men who threaten her with rape. Late in the book a young refugee is raped and executed. Both of these events happen offscreen. The effect of the events on Satrapi's family is the focus, not the events themselves. There is no loving close up of violence against women. Any close up is on the revulsion and fear that violence created. Two panels of violence's aftermath is more realistic than anything in Habibi. Women live in the constant shadow of sexual violence in a way men, although often victims themselves, do not. While Habibi used this violence frequently, in Persepolis it is barely mentioned but far more devastating.

Persepolis is one of the gold standards in graphic memoir for a reason. It might seem unfair to treat it as a fictionalized book but the power of it's real life events further illuminate the failure of imagination present in sexualized fiction. Satrapi comes completely alive in her book. We know who she is, we know the people around her, we care about their fates. A young child when the Shah is overthrown, Satrapi travels through her country's journey from a modern state to a repressed region. (Given that we will likely be at war with Iran before the end of the year, Persepolis becomes even more important.)

As a young girl, Satrapi has a personal relationship with Allah. She is educated in French schools and lives a life of comfortable affluence with her own servant (slave) and material comfort. As her country falls into disquiet and revolution, so does she. Marx slowly replaces God in her dreams, her goal of being The Prophet is replaced by dreams of revolution. Her parents march in the streets until the Shah is deposed and victory seems at hand. Satrapi struggles to make sense of the conflicting revolutions. War with Iraq arrives as long lost uncles and parents stream out of the prisons. The religious right scoops it's own political prisoners up for torture or execution and the veil is imposed. Western schools are closed and segregated. The cultural revolution isn't going the way her family intended. Classmates disappear through emigration or death. Even in her protected bubble of wealth and connections Satrapi is forced to confront the millions killed for the protection of political powers. Her own small rebellions, her refusal to relinquish everything about her former life lead her to a crossroads. Satrapi can either embrace radicalism or she can embrace exile.

When Neda Soltan was killed in 2009 many Westerners thought surely that would bring down the regime. Our Persian friends had a clearer view. They knew, as young Satrapi would have, that she was just one of the many. Yet another girl killed in the name of power, in the name of a narrow view of faith that must be upheld above all reason. In the early days of the revolution Satrapi's uncle thought that religious radicalism could not last. He believed that the men of faith would return to their temples and leave the daily running of the land to a new idealistic democracy. (Obviously, he misjudged that one. A cautionary tale for women in the current American political climate.) With so many books like Habibi, Aaron & Ahmed and Holy Terror on the market it is a gift to read Persepolis again. When we demonize  the people of Iraq or Iran instead of the institutions holding them captive, we demonize young Satrapi. Read Persepolis; The Story of a Childhood and think about who the enemies really are.