I'll repeat that, then: this is a self-contained read with a beginning, middle and decidedly final end. Under the most heavenly cloth-bound cover, gold-embossed and designed at a misted-memory guess to mimic those tiny slabs of Lindt Swiss chocolate, we are as ever with Ware confronted by a couple of maps in the form of a diagrammatical narrative and a family tree.
Rusty Brown and his Dad do indeed form part of the former, as does Chris Ware drawing the family home which bookends this saga. Yet none of them appear in the family tree which instead reveals the dynastic origins of the Lint family at whose centre lies Jordan What, dear reader, is up?
It is winter. In what would in any other season be a leafy suburb, a mock-Tudor, three-story home lies cold, still and empty. The light is fading as the window frame's shadow rises over a formal family portrait which one supposes to be of a mother, father and son. Evidence suggests that either the house has lain empty for some considerable time, or has lately been ill-maintained. Now we're presented with a complex series of basic images: impressions on the mind of a child.
The father's there to the bottom-right, but it's the mother who's most distinct and dominates the page with giant hands, a contentedly smiling face, eyes, nipple, mouth repeatedly and a bottle.
Gradually the images grow more complex and detailed as the boy's comprehension of his environment improves. The mother panics over a poo and Jordan fiddling with himself. But now come three key scenes, each involving violence. In the first the toddler has just learned to assign labels to the basic elements that make up his life: house, tree, sun, ant; Momma, Dad.
Bad, Bad, Bad. The ant has stopped moving and Jordan has a vision of a family of ants at the Pearly Gates. As a black maid ditto lays the kitchen table in the background, Jordan becomes increasingly distressed, unconvinced that it's merely asleep and so his mother goes out of her way, tenderly, to take it back outside and put it on a leaf. Then imagine watching what their life would look like if it flashed before their own eyes. Would you still find them deplorable? Or would you find mome Or would the cringe-worthy, slap-upside-the-head moments outweigh the good ones?
However the scale tips, this person -- Lint, in this book -- would at least be judged on a full life. It's hard to say one read this book, because it's more of an experience. Something that takes you on a ride through the narrative of Lint's life by dissecting moments through images and words, literally breaking down a scene into it's parts. It forces you to pay attention.
Online stores:. Copy in the library:. Reviews see all Staystrong Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology. Alice Hill in silent wonderland short story. Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. Smoldering Embers. The Tyrant King.
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