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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
I'd so looked forward to reading this book, but it's just a mess of pretentiousness. Yurk.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
via NYPL - The artwork is very nice, but Ms. Radtke's ruminations on our passage through life, and our inconsequential essence, was remarkable shallow and bland.
The artwork and writing work very effectively together to convey the author's search for meaning and understanding of mortality in the ruins of abandoned spaces.
Profoundly moving, both existential and hopeful. Radtke confronts one of our most human tendencies: to deny our own mortality, to cling to what we have as though it matters in the end. She sees ruins that are embraced and beloved in Italy and Iceland, and ruins that are forgotten or feared in the United States. She calls attention to our fetishistic love of the ancient past in contrast to our fear of the recent past: medieval ruins are picturesque while modern ruins are perverse.
Highly recommended.
Revisited in the wake of my grandfather's death.
Highly recommended.
Revisited in the wake of my grandfather's death.
I enjoyed this non-fiction graphic novel, though I also found it a little diffuse.... There are strands here, addressing grief over the death of her beloved uncle, for example, or more broadly, decay and travel/ rootlessness, or this thread about some photographs taken from, it's hard to explain, but a makeshift memorial cum art exhibit, that circulate but don't quite resolve over the course of the book (or maybe they just didn't resolve with the kind of explicit bang that I needed?). And while the quality of the prose was very high for a graphic novel (not to damn with faint praise-- Ratdtke is careful with language and it pays off), the quality of the visuals felt arbitrary, that she was using visual shortcuts and tools that were only casually related to the narrative problems she was confronting-- this applies to the images themselves, which might be representations of text, like search results, or photos collaged into the art or rotoscoped figures, or her page layout, which was sometimes sequential and somethings based in juxtaposition, though in neither case really connected to what was happening.... It was never bad, but it felt a little unsophisticated from the stance of making deliberate choices.
I did like a lot of us, despite my complaints above. It's interesting and thoughtful, and it does what you want a lot of non-fiction to do, to show you things about the world you didn't know, in the company of a guide who is conflicted in interesting ways. I just wanted some more convergence of the varying strands of this, or else a claim that these are related essays but not sequential.
I did like a lot of us, despite my complaints above. It's interesting and thoughtful, and it does what you want a lot of non-fiction to do, to show you things about the world you didn't know, in the company of a guide who is conflicted in interesting ways. I just wanted some more convergence of the varying strands of this, or else a claim that these are related essays but not sequential.
Kristen took an interesting path in life as a young college student and made quite a few decisions that many folks would likely veer away from. When her beloved uncle, who we learn about in pieces throughout the book, passes away, Kristen stumbles upon an abandoned mining town and kickoffs a lifelong interest in ruins and urban exploration. During the midst of her travels around the world with or without a boy in tow (specifically Andrew), we also learn more about a hereditary heart disease that lives through Kristen's family as well as her mother's dive into genealogy. I was surprised by how nicely she managed to wrap everything together in a way that you can actually put together the chaos she calls her thoughts.
With stunning art and a slow burning pace, she takes us on a tour of her younger life during and post-college while revealing vulnerable pieces of her that affects her choices. I loved her art and her journey, I enjoyed the pace she took, and was definitely interested in all the ties she made between her family/ancestors, the heart disease, and her interest in urban exploration, but I did not have a strong emotional reaction to her story. Was this her intent? I am not entirely sure on this.
With stunning art and a slow burning pace, she takes us on a tour of her younger life during and post-college while revealing vulnerable pieces of her that affects her choices. I loved her art and her journey, I enjoyed the pace she took, and was definitely interested in all the ties she made between her family/ancestors, the heart disease, and her interest in urban exploration, but I did not have a strong emotional reaction to her story. Was this her intent? I am not entirely sure on this.
The author used this creative process to sort through real and imagined grief and succeeded in piecing together various stories of ruined, abandoned places, congenital health conditions, premature death of a loved one, her own seeking of love and connection and her artistic sensibilities. It was effective for me. I enjoyed the experience of reading this and appreciated the artwork throughout. I'd like to see more by this author eventually.
I feel like this book was interesting, but the target that the author wanted me to hit was missed. Interesting art but I feel like the storytelling was very harshly separated and there's no closure.