Habibi
Craig Thompson
Pantheon Books, 2011
I'm going nuts reading books over summer break -- it feels so good to leisurely become engrossed in fiction. This weekend's project was the graphic novel Habibi by Craig Thompson. I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and he excitedly whipped this one off the shelf for me.
I am guilty of spending too much time reading words and not enough time enjoying the illustrations in graphic novels. Thompson does, though, what many other graphic novel authors do not: he embellishes his illustrations. They are so captivating, so fluidly drawn, so detailed that I appreciated this book by it's sheer volume of art. How someone dedicated himself to drawing over 650 pages of a story is admirable. In an industry where artists are discouraged from showing off their illustrative skills, this is a nice change from other books on the market. The story is set in, presumably, the Middle East where buildings and rugs and clothing are embellished with non-figural motifs full of undulating lines and geometric patterns. My Indian art historian was pleased.
This story about the bond between two orphaned slaves who grow up together, are separated, then find each other again is good but not great. Thompson has three stories going on: the present, flashbacks to the past, and biblical storytelling. Though he visually separates these stories by changing the background from white to black to flowery, I was put off by a sense of too much effort trying to weave these not-perfectly-connected tales together.
My ratings-
Illustrations: 5/5
Story: 3/5
Overall: 4/5
Craig Thompson
Pantheon Books, 2011
I'm going nuts reading books over summer break -- it feels so good to leisurely become engrossed in fiction. This weekend's project was the graphic novel Habibi by Craig Thompson. I mentioned to a friend that I enjoyed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and he excitedly whipped this one off the shelf for me.
I am guilty of spending too much time reading words and not enough time enjoying the illustrations in graphic novels. Thompson does, though, what many other graphic novel authors do not: he embellishes his illustrations. They are so captivating, so fluidly drawn, so detailed that I appreciated this book by it's sheer volume of art. How someone dedicated himself to drawing over 650 pages of a story is admirable. In an industry where artists are discouraged from showing off their illustrative skills, this is a nice change from other books on the market. The story is set in, presumably, the Middle East where buildings and rugs and clothing are embellished with non-figural motifs full of undulating lines and geometric patterns. My Indian art historian was pleased.
This story about the bond between two orphaned slaves who grow up together, are separated, then find each other again is good but not great. Thompson has three stories going on: the present, flashbacks to the past, and biblical storytelling. Though he visually separates these stories by changing the background from white to black to flowery, I was put off by a sense of too much effort trying to weave these not-perfectly-connected tales together.
My ratings-
Illustrations: 5/5
Story: 3/5
Overall: 4/5
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