Monday 30 July 2018

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso

I read graphic novels reasonably frequently, so the quality, impressiveness and sheer triumph of this novel is not a surprise. It is among the most affecting, most chilling and most prescient stories I have ever read in any medium.

This could be our Winner.

Sabrina is largely physically absent from the narrative- an ordinary woman that goes missing, very close to her home just after page 2. We don't see this abduction happen, only its aftermath. This is a narrative of aftermath- of consequences and cause and effect disguised as a straightforward mystery.

How does the world (or America, in this case) respond to horror or tragedy? The Kennedy Assassination? 9/11?Columbine? Sandy Hook? There really are too many school shootings to choose from. The way the masses handle tragedy and violence, the way hysteria breeds conspiracy in the welcoming arms of internet forums and talk radio is at the root of this book. What happens when we aren't bothered about truth, only agenda? What happens when being in agreement is more important than being right? What happens when fact checking just doesn't matter?

The novel mostly follows Calvin, a US airman doing a soulless US security related desk-job at a fortress-like unit in Colorado. He agrees to take in an old childhood pal for a few weeks, a change of scenery. Teddy's girlfriend, Sabrina, has disappeared, presumed dead, and Teddy is wracked with grief, comatose some days. Unsure how to best care for his reconnected friend, Calvin falls back on pizza and beer and resolves to be as supportive as he is able. Teddy sometimes talks to Sabrina's sister, Sandra on the phone as she struggles with the lack of answers, not knowing what happened to her sister. When a videotape surfaces of the murder being committed, things speed up.  Violence too extreme to be so random. An unscrupulous media. A story too unsatisfying and too scary to be true. An apparently senseless tragedy is distorted and rewritten, when Infowars-esque "fringe thinkers" and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret and dissect events to fit their own narratives. Death threats. Accusations. Hoaxes. Sabrina never existed, it's a government cover-up, etc. An increasingly frustrated Calvin, Sandra and Teddy (who is slipping further and further into the mad paranoia of the internet) are tied up in these online wannabe journalists own rejection of the truth in their frenzied, anonymous search for more meaningful answers.

It's a fascinating book about the weaponisation of misinformation and the radicalisation of society's marginalized, lonely people that find assurance and community on these forums. The people who exploit and feed this fear, the places these theories and fantasies manage to penetrate. In a world so full of tragedy, sadness and random acts of violence, the temptation of that Rabbit Hole of conspiracy seems too much. These people seem to be offering answers, rationale, comfort. They promise the Truth.

The artwork is functional, but nothing more. It gives the story the stark, urgent storyboard quality that works so brilliantly. It contains the paranoia, the insular nature of the story's themes. It is not a story of soft edges and beautiful colours. It leaves you hollowed out. Painfully aware of what can lurk inside people that you see every day. Reminds you that you can never really know a person. That we are all capable of falling victim to these predatory spreaders of paranoia and misinformation. That it's not just career conspiracy theorists, it swallows ordinary people into the black hole of misery and fear.

It is essential reading. I hope this book is a way in to the world of Graphic Fiction for new readers because there are some truly era-defining stories being told in that medium.

Friday 6 July 2018

Trashed by Derf Backderf

A brilliant "ode to the crap job of all crap jobs". Trashed, both funny and informative, documents the technically fictional but actually derived mostly from real life experiences of JB the garbageman, a stand in for author Derf Backderf. JB is a twentysometyhing college dropout resorting to an hourly paid gig on the back of his Ohio village's municipal garbage truck. An unglamorous job at the best of times, JB documents every filthy trashcan, every flattened roadkill and every interaction with the village's more 'characterful' residents. We see to the ladsy, banterous exchanges of the Village's facilities offices and its employees- an odd bunch of assorted jocks, racists and high IQ-low functioning brain types.

It's an eye opening book, reminding the reader that what we throw away might be out of sight and out of mind, but it is still *going* somewhere. Every disposable nappy ever used still exists out in the world. Every toothbrush that every person has ever used is lying in landfill somewhere, or on the sea bed. There's a lot of interesting nuggets about the history of waste disposal, current and former landfill practices and the scale of our current rubbish habit.

It's quite a bitter-sweet book really- engrossing the reader in the day to day lives of the trash team and their small town lives. To see the changing of the seasons and the unchanging quantities of furniture, packaging and other broken bits of property left out for disposal. At the same time it's quite grim in how aware they are of what their futures look like, the bleak generation Y future of deserted high streets, $30,000 degrees with no employment prospects and the thriving small towns of their youth dumped at the curb piece by piece and hurled off to be hidden somewhere people aren't going to complain about the mess.

An unusual story of a small town barely ticking over, about coming down to reality with a bump after adolescence has dissipated to adulthood, about the lifestyle choices we make and the habits we form as a society. It's about our unsustainable habits and our uncertain future.

The Lost World, by Michael Crichton

Enjoyable nonsense- adventure, dinosaurs, improbable happenings and lots of rocky descriptions of frantic action. The book does offer lots of musings on animal behaviour and isolated populations and how an ecosystem built out of creatures raised in total isolation, with no prior generation is in no way a functional thing or in any way indicative of a species' true behaviour. Makes you think about animal society, how something are taught and how some things are instinctively known and what happens when that gets changed.

Also, this is the best combination of dinosaurs. Parasaurolophus, Pachycephalosaurus and Maiasaura all get some page time, the bridesmaid dinosaurs that nobody ever remembers. It's not all about the toothy ones, the long necked ones or the frilly ones. The raptors in TLW are lawless thugs and the Rexes are adorable momma and papa rex and they are the best parents to their little fluff rexes.

Lots of Ian Malcolm Having Clever Thoughts, lots of irritating, cowardly rich kid Levine with all the expensive kit, badass-in-the-field Jungle Jane and animal behaviourist Sarah Harding, not of Girls Aloud fame, two not-annoying smart kid characters, Arby and Kelly that are very endearing and two Q type inventors/engineers Dr Thorne and assistant genius Eddie, building all sorts of equipment for this badly advised trip to Islar Sorna, Site B. The secret hatchery island of BioTech industries, the forgotten island where the dinos went free range that nobody is allowed to talk about. Villainy is bought to you in the form of egg-stealing Dodgson, right hand man King and shifty talking-head TV scientist Baselton.

Perhaps not as good as the first book, but certainly better than the film that got squeezed out of this novel.