A coming of age tale, that in some ways was more successful than others. Scarper Lee's deathday is approaching, he goes through his days just as always keeping to his comfortable routine. He watches the Wednesday Wheel with his mother (a Bakelite hairdryer) and each night secures his father (a big brass father with a sail) with a chain to the floor of the shed. He attends school each day listening to boring lectures on Circular History and waiting for the school lions to be caged before school lets out each day. However, when a new girl Vera Pike, joins the school Scarper's life (what's left of it) is thrown for a loop. She visits him during a knife storm and nicks one of his mum's kitchen gods (the egg timer to be exact), then she introduces him to one of the brain cases, Castro Smith, a kid who needs a dial on his chest to turn the world down.
When Scarper's father disappears the three go on a journey to find him, maybe at the Motherless Oven, the place where all the mothers and fathers are made by their children, and where the children are possibly made too.
I feel a bit like I might understand Scarper somewhat, with his deathday imminent he sees little point in going out with friends, or even making friends, but instead watches television, the same old gears grinding the same material around and around, with his mother.
He fears being alone and so chains his family around himself, yet also fears rejection so staves off the friendship offered to him by the mysterious Vera Pike.
I wished that Davis had developed the story a little further instead of adding more and more odd bits, (like the summer mines they release since Scarper is sick of winter - too bad they couldn't control the knife storms though). Like Castro comments on Pike's mum, but there are no other hints to what that means, why her mother is important to the story, or what Pike's motivation is at all.
I was interested in the outcome throughout the story, but ultimately disappointed by the abruptness of the ending and the lack of answers. However, I very much enjoyed the artwork and characters (except Vera who I wanted to kick in the teeth).
This book is weird. I’m a fan of weird. So when the very first page is about it raining knives… yeah, i’m pretty much in love already. So many strange things are introduced quite rapidly, and all without explaination, as if it’s all humdrum and routine–which it is for the characters in this world. Weather clocks, kitchen gods, wheels people watch like a TV… and the only way to figure out what the hell all these things mean is to keep reading. It’s one hell of a hook.
The art, too. All black and white and shadows. The faces of the three main characters are so expressive and speak just as loudly as their words. The parents, being odd contraptions built by their children, are all strange and unique and fascinating. And the just the bizarre nature of things being captured… raining knives, stark white against the black nights; daily wheels, intricate in their repeated patterns; and summer, turned on by mines on chains rising from the ground to hover over the town. It so weird, and so mindbogglingly amazing.
A slightly longer review can be found at my book blog: Marvel at Words.
I just want to start off by saying that this book was super weird and I loved it.
Honestly, it was so bizarre and a little difficult to understand at first. It wasn't until I was about half way through reading this book that I began to understand the world and it's rules. But that is most likely because Scarper Lee is an unreliable narrator. He doesn't know everything that is going on and he easily misses out information because he's a very closed off character. By having him as the narrator it left me feeling like I wanted to know more about the world and I did feel a little frustrated that I didn't know what was going on, but it made me keep reading because I needed to know more.
This world has similarities to our own, kids go to school, they complain about their parents and sulk about homework. But the weather can be deadly, rather than rain they have knifes falling from the sky, or can send you mad, laughing winds that you don't want to get caught in outside. They have a daily wheel that they watch that tells them the weather, has shows, ect., a little like TV.
But one of the most intriguing things about this world and this story was people's mums and dads. Rather than the parents creating the child, the child created the parent. Parents that were like robots, animals, abstract shapes, none were like the other. You could tell that they had come from a child's imagination. I also like how they can't remember how they made their parents or even where they made their parents. It's adds a level of mystery to the story. Especially when Scarper, Vera and Castro go on the hunt to find Scarper's dad and the Motherless Oven.
I really loved how the events of this story was over the course of about 2 weeks. Each day meaning that it was getting closer and closer to Scarper's deathday. I really enjoyed the fact that there was a deadline (no pun intended) to this story. If Scarper didn't find his dad, or if they didn't find the Motherless Oven, or do any of what the 3 of them set out to do, then Scarper would never do any of it. And I thought that was such an interesting concept. I also loved that by the end you don't know if Scarper's alive or dead. Which makes me want to read the next book asap.
The art style I think is very interesting. The stark black and white art made me think of mangas rather than the usual colourful western graphic novel. I thought that it made it seem a little more creepy, as the story already is a bit creepy, I felt that the black and white heightened it. It's very visually appealing and highly stylistic.
I really enjoyed this graphic novel. It was fun and quirky, it was so different to other graphic novels I've read before and I would recommend this o anyone that likes graphic novels and want to try reading something different and a little unexpected.
What the hell did I just read? I kept waiting for it to start to make sense, but I never became enlightened about their world and how and why it works. Still, fascinating and compelling in a dream-like way.
