Stop what you're doing right now and click on this link. I can wait.
Back? Good.
Now go buy it.
I'll have a comprehensive review of it completed whenever I locate my scanner, because explaining how the book works requires you see the interplay between David Mazzucchelli's words and hyper-stylized artwork. (I know this is always the case, but you clicked on that link, didn't you? So you can see that it's even more the case here.)
For those unfamiliar with Mazzucchelli, he illustrated Paul Auster's City of Glass [.pdf] as well as Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. High quality material, that is, but nothing that hinted he was capable of something like Asterios Polyp.
This book is starting to haunt me in that good sort of way. My old writing professor (do I start calling him mentor when we still talk and meet after I graduate?) sent me an e-mail telling me to check it out after he read a review, then it got mentioned on...The Millions? I think? Now here. And the City of Glass connection, which is a work I love (both the original and the graphic adaptation) and may be guest lecturing on.
This is clearly fate. I'm ordering it from my comic book shop today.
Posted by: P.T. Smith | Wednesday, 19 August 2009 at 08:52 AM
Interesting. The family background stuff seems a bit off, to me, but families vary. The narrative structure feels stiff, like a literal translation: in this case, a literal translation of a conventional storytelling style (kind of a New Yorker short story style? I don't read much of that.) onto the page. It might work, though.
Posted by: Ahistoricality | Wednesday, 19 August 2009 at 09:02 AM