Habibi by Craig Thompson

I was blown away by Habibi, a multi-layered epic about two slave children in the Middle East. Poverty forced Dodola’s parents to sell her into marriage while she was still very young. Later, she was kidnapped into slavery but she escaped with a much younger child, Zam. The two spent six years on their own in the desert before being separated and then spend about the same length of time struggling to find each other again. Their love for each other is complicated: as mother and child; as siblings; and then in a romantic sense also as they get older.

The setting is a dystopian near future, with pollution and water shortages. There is an overall quality of timelessness, however. This is partly because of the stories that Dodola tells, first to amuse Zam and later in a Scheherazade-type role in a sultan's harem. Magic is a part of young Zam's life, as when snakes spell messages for him. He and Dodola are both wonderful characters, storybook ingenues in a corrupt real world. 

Craig Thompson’s Blankets was the first graphic novel to give me a feeling that I’d read a proper novel when I’d finished it. (Most graphic novels have more of a short story feel for me, which isn’t a bad thing, only different.) Anyway, the narrative style in Habibi is much more complex than in Blankets. Retellings of traditional stories are interwoven with present day and with history. Time shifts to the past have the immediate visual clue of switching from white background to black, and the tales told by Dodola have ornate decorative borders to them.

Artwork in Habibi by Craig Thompson

I fretted a bit at the beginning that I was going to have to endure lessons in Arabic script, but that's a tiny fraction of the 665 pages. It was actually a painless introduction to a few Arabic letters and enough that I was able to read the final word, hubb, meaning love. Thompson's black ink art is totally sumptuous. I will only give you a taste of it here with the final double spread.

Nothing comes to mind as a true readalike, only books that have partial similarities. Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines tackles social issues in a complex narrative style and beautiful graphic novel format. You might want to revisit your favourite translation of Tales from 1001 Nights. Robert Crumb's graphic novel version of The Book of Genesis would make a good pairing, since some of Dodola's stories draw on the common origins of Christian and Islamic traditions. Trash by Andy Mulligan could flesh out possible lives for the people who live on the garbage dump. And of course there are Thompson's earlier works, including Good-bye Chunky Rice, Blankets, and Carnet de Voyage.

NOTE added October 29, 2011: If you'd like to read some far more in-depth critiques of this book, check out the Habibi Round Table at the Comics Journal website, where Hayley Campbell wrote: "I actually really like it when writers go off on some tangent in a madly enthusiastic way." Me too!

ANOTHER NOTE added November 19, 2011: Listen and watch Craig Thompson's lecture that was filmed in Minneapolis and posted on the Forbidden Planet website.

Canterbury Trail by Angie Abdou

After an unexpected dump of spring snow in the Canadian Rockies, a motley group from a tiny ski town makes a pilgrimage to a backcountry ski hut for one last powder extravaganza. Mountain conditions are ripe for an avalanche, but human interactions are just as volatile in this mix of snowmobilers, skiers, snowshoers and a snowboarder together with four dogs, an overcrowded cabin and copious amounts of booze and drugs.

Angie Abdou takes full advantage of the possibilities for humour when incompatible (and immature and horny) people are in close quarters. She pays homage to Chaucer in subtle ways, like having the cook (who made marijuana cookies) become too stoned to tell a coherent story. The short chapters keep shifting to different limited third person points of view and so the reader gets multi-dimensional character sketches. They are believable people, flawed but with redeeming qualities. The only two I could see myself hanging out with are the lesbians, but I could only take Cosmos in small doses. She's the kind of person who would use "goddess" as a verb.

The very best thing about the book, however, is the ending. I LOVED it! If you read Canterbury Trail and disagree that it's a fabulous ending, I'll see you in the comments area.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller was born in England but moved to central Africa with her family in 1972, when she was two. She raised there in poverty, mostly on a tobacco and cattle farm in Zimbabwe during the time of the Rhodesian civil war. Their trips to town were made in a mine-proof Land Rover, her parents holding submachine guns as they drove. Fuller presents her racist, alcoholic and insane mother quite unvarnished in this memoir. It is at turns funny, poignant and horrifying.

I listened to the Recorded Books audiobook which was expertly narrated by Lisette Lecat (10 hours, 15 minutes). Since Fuller is only recording her life into her early 20s, it makes sense that she closes with these lines: "This is not a full circle. It's life carrying on. It's the next breath we take. It's the choice we make to get on with it."

Fuller's latest work, Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness, is said to focus more on her mother. I've no doubt that it's every bit as fascinating as Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight.

For more stories about White girlhoods in Africa, check out my list on the Edmonton Public Library website. Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji is a novel set in Uganda in 1972, when everyone who wasn't ethnic-African was expelled from that country, even those citizens who had been born in Uganda. Another possible readalike is Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace, a fast-paced novel about bullying and racial tensions based on the author's experiences in an elite boarding school in Zimbabwe in the 1980s.

No Sweetness Here by Ama Ata Aidoo

First published over 40 years ago, this collection of thoughtful and entertaining short stories from Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo does not feel dated at all. Her African women and men are doing ordinary things, like moving to the city to find work, or praying over a sick child. They cook, laugh, and fall in and out of love. They are vividly alive.

Aidoo captures voice especially well. Two of the stories are told entirely in dialogue. I love the expressions her storytellers use to object to interruptions: "I'm cooking the whole meal for you, why do you want to lick the ladle now?" (In the Cutting of a Drink) and "I am taking you to birdtown so I can't understand why you insist on searching for eggs from the suburb!" (Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral).

The path that led to me choosing this book is rather convoluted. I'll thank a commenter on the Amy Reads blog for linking to an NPR interview with Chimamanda Adichie in which she recommends No Sweetness Here. Adichie's warm praise, together with my having enjoyed Aidoo's novel Sister Killjoy some years ago, spurred me to track down the short story collection via interlibrary loan. I'm very glad to have done so.

Drawing from Memory by Allen Say

Japanese artist Allen Say's picture book autobiography is a treat for all ages.  Photos and archival documents as well as paintings and black and white sketches are used to illustrate his life, up until age 16 (in 1953), when he went with his father to live in the United States.

Say's early life was remarkable. His father said to him "I expect you to be a respectable citizen, not an artist! Artists are lazy and scruffy people - they are not respectable." His parents had divorced when he was a young child and that is partly why he ended up living on his own in Tokyo from age 12 onward. Say's favourite cartoonist, Noro Shinpei, agreed to take him on as a student. Shinpei became a sort of father to Say after that.

Say struggled with drawing hands and asked, "How long do I have to practice?" Shinpei's response: "Drawing is never a practice. To draw is to see and discover. Every time you draw, you discover something new. Remember that." (This advice is also useful for me, since I'm currently taking a drawing class.)

The book is fascinating record of social conditions during World War II and its aftermath in Japan through the eyes of a young person. It is also a moving account of remaining true to one's artistic heart. There's a nice interview with the author in School Library Journal online.

Readalikes: the autobiography A Drifting Life by Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi covers a similar time period and subject in graphic novel format for adults and teens. The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis is another good all ages picture book autobiography.

Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman and quantum electrodynamics in a graphic novel package = YAY! That was my initial reaction, since I've not yet gotten around to reading anything written by Feynman himself and also because I loved Jim Ottaviani's earlier GN treatment of Niels Bohr, Suspended in Language. Not surprisingly (since the quantum physics world is small - ha!) Bohr makes appearances in Feynman too. What surprised me was the difficulty I had engaging with Feynman's life story. At about 100 pages in, I set it down for a couple of weeks, not sure if I would ever finish it.

Either I gave up at exactly the spot where the story picked up (what Feynman did next after he'd finished working on the Manhattan Project atomic bomb) or else I wasn't in the right frame of mind when I lost interest, because I eventually enjoyed the final 150 or so pages.

In 1965, Feynman was asked in a TV news show to explain in a few words what he had won the Nobel prize for. In a taxi afterwards, a cab driver sympathized, "I'da said, 'If I could explain it in three minutes it wouldn't be worth the Nobel prize!"

Parts of Feynman's lectures are presented frame by frame. It didn't bother me that I couldn't understand most of the science as he explains how photons react with electrons. In the audience, students are pictured with thought bubbles ("How can it be?" "I don't like it." "I don't understand.") with words written backwards; words that would be right-way around from the lecturer's point of view. Feynman says, "I can see you saying 'I don't understand.' Tough. I don't understand it either. I don't like it either." 

Feynman used squiggly line diagrams to explain his theories and these translate well to a graphic novel presentation. Leland Myrick's expressive line art keeps the wide cast of characters identifiable. Feynman's unruly, uncombed hair is unmistakable. Colourist Hilary Sycamore has added solid, muted colours to the artwork. It's an attractive book that will appeal to readers who enjoy graphic novel biographies and/or science.

David at The Centered Librarian has posted links to talks by Feynman that are on YouTube with lovely photo imagery. They are divided into three subjects - Beauty, Honours and Creativity - and each one is only 4 or 5 minutes long.

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

The river Thames in London has frozen solid only 40 times between 1142 and 1895. Canadian author Helen Humphreys has written character-based vignettes for each of those times, based on true archival accounts. Her prose is both lyrical and spare. Since the destruction of the old London Bridge and the building of a new one that allows water to move more quickly and freely, "the Thames would never, will never, freeze solid in the heart of London again." Historical artwork and photographs add to the charm of this little book, which can be enjoyed in brief dips, or read straight through in the way of a story-cycle. 

I recommend this to fans of the sort of historical fiction that spans centuries and in which place is as much a character as the people, such as Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd, or Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - even though these authors write much fatter books. If you are looking for more slices of life from medieval England, you might also enjoy Good Masters! Sweet Ladies by Laura Amy Schlitz.