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what a delightful graphic novel. who'd a thunk it: a sea monster man with a love of iambic pentameter, his three little crabby friends, an agoraphobic, and romance.
the art in this graphic novel is lovely, fluid, stark. each drawing is a miniature story in itself--each frame rewards an extended admiration. the author depicts his characters with a superb sense of embodied emotion--how anguish contorts the spine, how glee opens the expression, how love can make one beautiful. truly the work of an artist who has observed creatures minutely and with great compassion.
the words of the story are entirely dialogue--no exposition. it makes for great fun, filling in the blanks, making the connections. the author clearly respects his readers--no spoon-feeding here. and iambic pentameter! what fun he must have had writing it. at least as much fun as i did reading it.
as romances go, it's quite bent. but it is a romance, and a very satisfying one. i highly recommend reading this on the beach with some fried squid and a beach umbrella.
Nobody knows how to take a what-if to the very furthest point of its logical conclusion better than Max Barry.
In this book, the question begins with a dissatisfaction: the flawed engineering of the human body. Then it asks: what if we could re-engineer it? Via mechanical and computer engineering, not nano- or biotech. Max Barry's answer to that question will undoubtedly surprise you.
This book is both thoroughly outrageous and logically relentless. The main character is a nerd on nerd steroids: ruthless, addicted to logic, emotionally AWOL. He lives for the puzzle--how to improve things. When he is injured in an accident, he turns this tunnel-vision attention to improving the human body.
You won't believe how often you'll be saying: I want that feature. If you are old enough to have arthritic knees and trifocals, you'll be drooling over the possibilities.
But all these improvements come with a price, often paid in blood and pain. In Barry's book, the escalating consequences of re-engineering the body start out horrible and end up unspeakably gruesome. But through it all, the voice of our narrator-engineer is just sublimely funny. He is SUCH a geek. An absolutely unforgettable, oddly tender, emotionally tone-deaf geek.
The book also features a wonderful send-up of corporations (of course, does anybody do that better than Max?) and some inspired character names (really, you should read it just for the character names). Give this one a chance, and I promise you'll never look at your body the same again.
i write that only mildly tongue-in-cheek; only future literary potentates will decide whether this book belongs in The Canon, as jane austen certainly does, but faber's book certainly has equal scope and similar concerns, and fine, fine writing.
we contemporary humans tend to look at austen's work in one sense as rather quaint--entire tomes about niceties of courtship and marriage, social position, and how the wrong hat can ruin a woman. but in fact these issues were economic, life-and-death issues for women who had few (to no) other options for financial security. faber certainly gets this, and he makes painfully, horribly clear what happens to those women who fail to make a good match.
and he gets women. his portraits of Sugar and Agnes are enthralling, Sugar in particular. the warps in her character caused by her debasement are painful (and sometimes, in a black humor way, very funny) and appalling. one can't help but pity her, and not in an i'm-so-superior way, because faber makes us feel the inevitability of it. and yet she's also extraordinary in her fight to retain her own dignity. i'm pretty sure that if i were in her little lace-up boots, i'd drink or drug myself to death at a fast clip, but Sugar fights and keeps on fighting for both her intellect and her heart. you just can't help, in the end, but admire her.
i won't witter on about all the characters. suffice it to say that by the end of the book, the main characters have all been treated to a painstaking examination, and none are perfect, but all are achingly human. warts and all.
austen had the advantage of writing about her own times, to an audience that swam in that sea; faber has the uphill battle of not only having had to do a brain-pounding quantity of research, but also having to convey the particulars to an audience only tenuously connected to the times. the details of this book are staggering, yet slipped in so naturally that readers will find no life preserver is needed. it's an astonishing accomplishment.
it's also so ingeniously plotted that you can't put it down, a cruel thing in a book this long (and weighty). i'm going to toddle off and catch up with my sleep now, having been up til 1am finishing it off. you just go read the book.
if you have to get on a plane and fly to Portland and sit outside Powell's until they get a new shipment of this book, do it.
you can read the summary of the book above. the summary does not do it justice, not at all. and let me say upfront that the whole alternate-world thing isn't really relevant to the guts of this story. doesn't hurt it either, but it's not at all what makes this story work so gorgeously.
it's the voice, the voice of the narrator. it is so stunningly unique, diamond-hard and silk at the same time. this book's rhythms slide between pounding hot iron at a forge and sleepy, half-remembered dreams in a perfect, seamless weld.
the book asks what any sentient human in these times must: what do you do with all this pain? how can we live day to day with all these wars, and our blue planet's unraveling, and all the endless sound and fury we collectively endure while achieving, seemingly, so little progress toward any sort of nirvana?
and the real thrill of it is, this book pulls it off and often makes you laugh yourself senseless.
on a weird whim, i bought an autographed copy. it's going on my shelves next to my autographed vonnegut and my autographed studs terkel, two writers who also looked clear-eyed at our times and our species and found, despite it all, cause for hope.
and bittersweet, but undeniably sweet, laughter.
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ryan stuart has commented on (4) products.
Dear Creature by Jonathan Case
ryan stuart, April 6, 2012
swoon...what a delightful graphic novel. who'd a thunk it: a sea monster man with a love of iambic pentameter, his three little crabby friends, an agoraphobic, and romance.
the art in this graphic novel is lovely, fluid, stark. each drawing is a miniature story in itself--each frame rewards an extended admiration. the author depicts his characters with a superb sense of embodied emotion--how anguish contorts the spine, how glee opens the expression, how love can make one beautiful. truly the work of an artist who has observed creatures minutely and with great compassion.
the words of the story are entirely dialogue--no exposition. it makes for great fun, filling in the blanks, making the connections. the author clearly respects his readers--no spoon-feeding here. and iambic pentameter! what fun he must have had writing it. at least as much fun as i did reading it.
as romances go, it's quite bent. but it is a romance, and a very satisfying one. i highly recommend reading this on the beach with some fried squid and a beach umbrella.
Machine Man (Vintage Contemporaries) by Max Barry
ryan stuart, August 11, 2011
Nobody knows how to take a what-if to the very furthest point of its logical conclusion better than Max Barry.In this book, the question begins with a dissatisfaction: the flawed engineering of the human body. Then it asks: what if we could re-engineer it? Via mechanical and computer engineering, not nano- or biotech. Max Barry's answer to that question will undoubtedly surprise you.
This book is both thoroughly outrageous and logically relentless. The main character is a nerd on nerd steroids: ruthless, addicted to logic, emotionally AWOL. He lives for the puzzle--how to improve things. When he is injured in an accident, he turns this tunnel-vision attention to improving the human body.
You won't believe how often you'll be saying: I want that feature. If you are old enough to have arthritic knees and trifocals, you'll be drooling over the possibilities.
But all these improvements come with a price, often paid in blood and pain. In Barry's book, the escalating consequences of re-engineering the body start out horrible and end up unspeakably gruesome. But through it all, the voice of our narrator-engineer is just sublimely funny. He is SUCH a geek. An absolutely unforgettable, oddly tender, emotionally tone-deaf geek.
The book also features a wonderful send-up of corporations (of course, does anybody do that better than Max?) and some inspired character names (really, you should read it just for the character names). Give this one a chance, and I promise you'll never look at your body the same again.
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
ryan stuart, June 29, 2011
like jane austen with dirty words.i write that only mildly tongue-in-cheek; only future literary potentates will decide whether this book belongs in The Canon, as jane austen certainly does, but faber's book certainly has equal scope and similar concerns, and fine, fine writing.
we contemporary humans tend to look at austen's work in one sense as rather quaint--entire tomes about niceties of courtship and marriage, social position, and how the wrong hat can ruin a woman. but in fact these issues were economic, life-and-death issues for women who had few (to no) other options for financial security. faber certainly gets this, and he makes painfully, horribly clear what happens to those women who fail to make a good match.
and he gets women. his portraits of Sugar and Agnes are enthralling, Sugar in particular. the warps in her character caused by her debasement are painful (and sometimes, in a black humor way, very funny) and appalling. one can't help but pity her, and not in an i'm-so-superior way, because faber makes us feel the inevitability of it. and yet she's also extraordinary in her fight to retain her own dignity. i'm pretty sure that if i were in her little lace-up boots, i'd drink or drug myself to death at a fast clip, but Sugar fights and keeps on fighting for both her intellect and her heart. you just can't help, in the end, but admire her.
i won't witter on about all the characters. suffice it to say that by the end of the book, the main characters have all been treated to a painstaking examination, and none are perfect, but all are achingly human. warts and all.
austen had the advantage of writing about her own times, to an audience that swam in that sea; faber has the uphill battle of not only having had to do a brain-pounding quantity of research, but also having to convey the particulars to an audience only tenuously connected to the times. the details of this book are staggering, yet slipped in so naturally that readers will find no life preserver is needed. it's an astonishing accomplishment.
it's also so ingeniously plotted that you can't put it down, a cruel thing in a book this long (and weighty). i'm going to toddle off and catch up with my sleep now, having been up til 1am finishing it off. you just go read the book.
Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
ryan stuart, June 21, 2011
if you have to get on a plane and fly to Portland and sit outside Powell's until they get a new shipment of this book, do it.you can read the summary of the book above. the summary does not do it justice, not at all. and let me say upfront that the whole alternate-world thing isn't really relevant to the guts of this story. doesn't hurt it either, but it's not at all what makes this story work so gorgeously.
it's the voice, the voice of the narrator. it is so stunningly unique, diamond-hard and silk at the same time. this book's rhythms slide between pounding hot iron at a forge and sleepy, half-remembered dreams in a perfect, seamless weld.
the book asks what any sentient human in these times must: what do you do with all this pain? how can we live day to day with all these wars, and our blue planet's unraveling, and all the endless sound and fury we collectively endure while achieving, seemingly, so little progress toward any sort of nirvana?
and the real thrill of it is, this book pulls it off and often makes you laugh yourself senseless.
on a weird whim, i bought an autographed copy. it's going on my shelves next to my autographed vonnegut and my autographed studs terkel, two writers who also looked clear-eyed at our times and our species and found, despite it all, cause for hope.
and bittersweet, but undeniably sweet, laughter.
(10 of 15 readers found this comment helpful)