The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Wonder of wordless picture books Posted: 22 Oct 2011 11:32 PM PDT THE most recent e-mail I received from a reader asking for book recommendations was from a young man who'd just discovered Shaun Tan: "Hi, I like reading but I prefer stuff with pictures, like graphic novels. Last weekend I found a book called The Arrival in the graphic novels section of a bookshop. It's awesome, and I was surprised to find out that the artist, Shaun Tan, actually writes children's books. "Are his other books like The Arrival? Which one would you recommend? And are there other children's books like it, with cool drawings and an interesting story that isn't too childish?" – From Visually Stimulated I agree! Shaun Tan's The Arrival is awesome (check out the reproduced page on the right). If you haven't had the pleasure, it's a wordless picture book that tells the story of a man who has to leave his family and travel to a new land to make his living. A few years ago, just months before this book was published, I had the pleasure of hearing Tan speak about how The Arrival grew from 32 pages (the average length of a picture book) to 40 pages, to 48 and so on until it reached its final length of 128 pages. I guess this is why it is often shelved with the graphic novels: Booksellers aren't quite sure what category it belongs to, and not just because it has more pages than is usual for a picture book, but also because of its sepia-toned illustrations, which depict the loneliness and alienation felt by its protagonist as he navigates the strange country he has come to. Rather than portray a real country in his book, Tan creates a make-believe world whose foreign alphabet, and weird and wonderful flora and fauna allow readers to feel something of the character's bewilderment. Tan has often said that he writes and illustrates what interests him and does not create specifically with children in mind, but I think that the disorientation, isolation and depression that crop up again and again in his books are what all of us (children included) have experienced (and will continue to experience) in one way or other, and at some point or other in our lives. This makes the work relevant on so many levels. Here's my reply to Visually Stimulated: I love all of Shaun Tan's books. He has illustrated for other writers, but books like The Red Tree and The Lost Thing are wholly his creations. The Arrival is Tan's only wordless picture book – it's also the longest. The Red Tree and The Lost Thing have 32 pages each. Then there is Tales From Outer Suburbia, a collection of illustrated stories, each more startling than the one before. There are lots of picture books with really stunning illustrations and many tell stories that people of all ages can relate to. Check out David Weisner's books, especially his wordless picture books, which often present everyday situations and objects with a fantastical twist. You may also like The Mysteries Of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. This book is actually a collection of pictures depicting strange and even eerie events. They are not connected ... unless you want them to be. Indeed, the pictures absolutely cry out to be interpreted and expanded on in a variety of ways. Therefore, while this book might seem not to tell a story, it actually contains infinite numbers of stories, all just waiting to be released by the imagination. Finally, if you're interested in picture books with serious themes and striking illustrations, try The Island by Armin Greder. A stranger is washed ashore on an island and is treated with shocking cruelty by its inhabitants. The harsh, dark strokes of the charcoal illustrations reflect the pain of the stranger, and also the islanders' hatred and rage. Greder's work raises questions about the racism and paranoia inherent in most of us, and although a short work, presents food for thought worth many hours of discussion. Good luck with exploring the world of picture books! ● Daphne Lee reads to wonder and wander, be amazed and amused, horrified and heartened and inspired and comforted. She wishes more people will try it too. Send e-mails to the above address and check out her blog at daphne.blogs.com/books. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2011 11:29 PM PDT HAVE you ever walked into a bookstore hoping to buy a good book ... only to walk out, despondent? A recent trip to a major bookstore in downtown Sydney, Australia, was more than just disheartening for me – it was fretful. Because amidst hundreds of books, we simply could not find any that we wanted – and I blame the bookstore for this. In the juvenile section, books were arranged immaculately by authors' last names. You'd expect Roald Dahl to rest close to Patrick Carman, author of the Skeleton Creek series, Book 1 of which had been recommended by my son's school librarian. Sadly, Carman was not there; instead, Dahl shared the row with young adult fiction writer Jenny Downham. My eight-year-old son pulled out her steamy You Against Me, only to fret over it, then return it. Off he scurried to look for reliable Rick Riordan. But The Lightning Thief, the first book of Riordan's amazing Percy Jackson And The Olympians series, was nowhere to be seen either. Having spoken to a few staff members, some of whom were friendly and some indignant, my son returned and said, "I told them to have more copies because all my friends are reading it." A child knew of the extent of Riordon's popularity. The bookstore, sadly, did not. I kept trawling the store desperately to find my son a book. The one I finally found, which he approved with a nod after perusing the first paragraph, was a hidden gem sitting alone on a trolley and looking as despondent as my boy. It was Eva Ibbotson's One Dog And His Boy. Apparently, the bookstore did not have young children in mind when shelving and categorising its books. Of all market segments, it is kids that book retailers should target so as to secure a future generation of customers. Not this store, which did not even have recommendations for children. Nor did it have any for adults. Among the bestsellers, the closest alternative it had to recommendations, was Greogory David Roberts' Shataram. Popular though it may be, the book could not have been a bestseller. It was there in the months leading up to Christmas last year, it was there again during this recent visit, and I suppose it will remain there until this Christmas.... I tried to focus on finding just one interesting book to while away an upcoming long weekend. I remembered reading about Urs Widmer's My Mother's Lover recently in the newspapers. When asked about it, the staff shrugged sheepishly. They had not heard of it. In the vaguely defined non-fiction new arrival shelves, Thomas Friedman did not take centre stage. He hadn't arrived yet, though I had already spotted in online pictures the cover of his latest book, That Used To Be Us, prominently displayed in a bookstore in Singapore. I did not bother to ask the Sydney store's staff about this one. I was too tired. As we left, largely still disappointed, I worried about this store's future. When placed in the hands of book-loving booksellers, books flourish and their future is indestructible even if slightly menaced by technology. If treated as just another product, though, they will surely succumb to that menace. The Lightning Thief soon arrived on my doorstep from Book Depository (bookdepository.co.uk), cheaper and bearing the faint scent of London. I am awaiting Haruki Murakami's 1084 from my favourite KL bookstore. And I was, indeed, mesmerised by My Mother's Lover, which I eventually found, ironically, in the local library. The tables have turned and librarians, previously dismissed as conservatively unimaginative, now have finer taste. Even as I slurped up the book, though, fretfulness lingered over the future of books – and the decreasing likelihood of visiting that architecturally majestic bookstore in Sydney again. ● Abby Wong thanks the much smaller bookstore in her neighbourhood shopping mall for highlighting John Ajvide Lindgvist's Harbour, a book that terrified her from beginning to end. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2011 11:28 PM PDT This memoir about living with the late Stieg Larsson is almost as thrilling as the bestselling crime novels he wrote. Stieg & Me: Memories Of A Life With Stieg Larsson THE Girl With The Dragon Tattoo phenomenon has sturdier legs that anyone ever expected, even at the height of Millennium Trilogy fever two years ago. With genuine excitement replacing cynicism over the December release of the Hollywood film adaptation – thanks in large part to a highly promising-looking trailer – interest has been reignited in the life and times of the best-selling novelist Sweden has ever produced. Because Stieg Larsson died before his three novels were published, let alone became global bestsellers, he has remained something of an enigma. The picture of the man is partly filled in here by his girlfriend of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson, whose memoir, Stieg & Me is both a fascinating and a frustrating read. And, one feels, it could have been longer. Hers is a yarn that itself would make for a natural sub-plot in one of her late partner's novels. When Larsson was felled suddenly by a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50, his death destroyed the couple's dreams of a financially secure future – one cruel blow upon another for the surviving lover, as the pair had lived on the slenderest of means for the duration of their relationship. When the trilogy turned into a cash cow – further fattened by Swedish film adaptations, and translations into dozens of languages – a bitter struggle began between Garbrielsson and Stieg's father and brother, Erland and Joakim Larsson. Ignoring the bereaved Gabrielsson and her needs, Erland and Joakim seized total control of Stieg's estate, despite – in Garbrielsson's version of this thrilling narrative – having not been in any way close to Stieg during his lifetime. Nevertheless, under Swedish law, Gabrielsson has no legal grounds to inherit as she never married Stieg. Erland and Joakim were also able to seize ownership of Stieg's three novels and – in Gabrielsson view – exploit them greedily and inappropriately, preventing her from seeing a single krona from her late partner's work. One really senses the agony of her rage and sense of injustice in these pages. There are insights here too, such as some background to Larsson's trip to an International Communist convention in Ethiopia in 1977, and exposition on Sweden's class system. But much of Stieg & Me is unsurprising. Gabrielsson maintains that all the action in the Millenium Trilogy novels are based on true events; not greatly revealing – after all, Stieg spent most of his working life as a journalist. We already knew that the Mellqvist Kaffebar and other locations frequented by protagonist Mikael Blomkvist were ones the couple too patronised, that many of the characters in the novels are based on real-life friends, and so on. Many Stockholmers claim to know or have known someone depicted in the novel – indeed countless denizens of the Swedish capital have played this guessing game in recent years. But one must surmise that Gabrielson's word is the definitive one in this regard. She also states it was she who encouraged that Larsson's novels keep issues such as feminism, corruption and Sweden's faintly palpable undercurrent of fascism at the forefront of readers' minds, especially as they are causes Larsson fought for so valiantly and for so long. Penned in a terse and unadorned style, Stieg & Me is as much Gabrielsson's case against the surviving Larssons as it is a memoir, which of course makes it all the more gripping. While Gabrielsson can't write anywhere as engagingly as her late boyfriend, her words do flow with passion and conviction. Disappointingly, the book fails to provide useful information, much less closure, on the rumoured "fourth novel", said to be partly completed on Larsson's laptop at the time of his death. Last year, Gabrielsson told reporters that that she didn't want the "fourth novel" to ever be published. In this memoir, she appears to have changed her mind, suggesting she's open to the possibility of finishing it herself. "I cannot tell exactly what part of the Millennium Trilogy comes from Stieg and what comes from me," she says, supporting the contention (truthful or otherwise, or somewhere in between) that the books were co-written to a large extent. "I can only say that just as Stieg and I shared a common language, we often wrote together," she writes. The book's most gratifying surprise is of Gabrielsson's own making. After giving the reader a history lesson on Scandinavian lore, she describes how she sought supernatural vengeance against the enemies of herself and Larsson. And here the book really catches fire. Gabrielsson performs an ancient Nordic ceremony to curse her foes and all those who had brought pain and suffering to Larsson. The accursed includes his father and brother, of course. Understandably perhaps, Gabrielsson's dialogue with the surviving Larssons over the estate has broken down irrevocably. Nevertheless, she says she'll continue her fight for the deceased Larsson – and for a segment of the estate pie – because "he wouldn't have expected anything less". Gabrielsson clearly is a woman with an axe to grind, and then, when sufficiently sharp, to – metaphorically – bury it in the skull of Stieg's father, before setting upon the brother with the same bloodied weapon, Salander-style. One thing that emerges from both the Millenium Trilogy books and this brief memoir is that Swedish familial revenge is nurtured for decades and through the generations; the Swedes are the blood-feuding Albanians of Northern Europe. In Stieg & Me, Gabrielsson comes across as being something of an avenging angel – not unlike Larsson's goth-punk heroine, Salander – and one can almost see the paunchy, middle-aged anti-fascism activist and novelist smiling that uncertain smile of his in some Nordic Valhalla before taking another drag on his ever-present cigarette. Nobody can speak for him now of course, not even his soulmate – and there is no doubt that this is who Gabrielsson was – but he probably would have liked this memoir, which describes him with such tenderness, and his enemies, with such venom. Meanwhile, the legal thriller behind the Millennum Trilogy is set to keep running. It's a story that forces you to take sides, and this book successfully persuades the reader to take Gabrielsson's. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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