Epileptic by David B.
For 2008, I will simply be chronicling the books, not counting them here. M, the author at Mental Multivitamin, kindly christened me a chronicler, as well as several other authors of site I admire. Check them all out.
The first book I finished in the new year was Epileptic by David B., a graphic memoir of a boy’s experience with his brother’s epilepsy. This sat on the shelf for over a year. Midway through, I would have said it was a masterwork, and one of the best graphic narratives I’d read. By the end, though, my opinion was less enthusiastic. This a stunningly illustrated personal story, rich with emotional insight and pictorial allusion. It falls prey, though, to the limits of personal narrative; it does not end so much as it fades and fizzles into several transcriptions of the author’s dreams. The book would have been better served had the author ended it at a point in the past. His insight on the past was strong and clear. While real lives have no clear ending, stories about them can, especially if told with the distance and insight of some years. I am in the minority opinion of this book; most have hailed it as a masterpiece.
This year’s and last year’s books are cataloged in my library at Gurulib.com