Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by nickyhotdogs
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Hark! A Vagrant is one of those comics that came out in the webcomic heyday of the mid-2000s, that felt really great to be in on from the ground floor. They had a singular voice and style and I followed it for years, until the author retired it around 2018. When I learned she had written a graphic novel, there was never any question I'd read it.
The vision, voice, and style of this novel is exactly what I'd expect from those comics. No, the subject isn't as easy or made fun of in the same way, but there's a clear through line, not least because many of those comics were being conceived and written during the events of this memoir.
I think the main thing to take away here is the nuance displayed. Literally and figuratively, Beaton works in shades of gray, marking the non-linear movement between extreme emotional distress and healing, and the tug-of-war between the guilt of complicity and lasting harms and unfairness of environmental, emotional, physical, and sexual violence and victimization. I don't mean the story is non-linear, but it is a comic strip for all that, and so should be read more like each page or two is an individual episode.
So many of the people included seemed to be living their lives with no pretenses, but the story is very much about wool being pulled from Beaton's eyes, one gauzy strand at a time. At the same time, it's just a story of a young person feeling trapped and harried by circumstances and debt, by expectations and responsibility, and making the best clear-headed decision it seemed was available. This is a great read for so many reasons. But I'd say it's a must-read because it can tackle so much all at the same time, without feeling distracted or aimless.
I'll grant the possibility that I'm so drawn to Beaton's work because I'm of an age with her, and so her experiences seem to reflect not just her own but that of so many others of this time period: The relatively new expectation that college is just a thing you must do and that grunt labor was a thing you did not want to do but for some reason was a thing you also must do, the sudden collective agreement we'd all be connected online and to our phones all the time, the fact that a me-too movement was still a decade away despite being 40 years on from important feminist movements, that native peoples are not all dead and we'll just fight over how to correctly eulogize them but actually they are still alive and need true recognition, etc., etc. But even if it's true that I'm unfairly biased, it just means that an enormous cohort of North Americans (at least) should find something to relate to in this novel.
Very glad this was written and so glad to have read it. This is a keeper.
Full disclosure: I once emailed the author c.2007-2008 for no other reason than to express my gratitude for her writing and wish her continued success. She briefly thanked me for the kind words. I don't know that this fact has any bearing on my review of her novel, but there it is.
The vision, voice, and style of this novel is exactly what I'd expect from those comics. No, the subject isn't as easy or made fun of in the same way, but there's a clear through line, not least because many of those comics were being conceived and written during the events of this memoir.
I think the main thing to take away here is the nuance displayed. Literally and figuratively, Beaton works in shades of gray, marking the non-linear movement between extreme emotional distress and healing, and the tug-of-war between the guilt of complicity and lasting harms and unfairness of environmental, emotional, physical, and sexual violence and victimization. I don't mean the story is non-linear, but it is a comic strip for all that, and so should be read more like each page or two is an individual episode.
So many of the people included seemed to be living their lives with no pretenses, but the story is very much about wool being pulled from Beaton's eyes, one gauzy strand at a time. At the same time, it's just a story of a young person feeling trapped and harried by circumstances and debt, by expectations and responsibility, and making the best clear-headed decision it seemed was available. This is a great read for so many reasons. But I'd say it's a must-read because it can tackle so much all at the same time, without feeling distracted or aimless.
I'll grant the possibility that I'm so drawn to Beaton's work because I'm of an age with her, and so her experiences seem to reflect not just her own but that of so many others of this time period: The relatively new expectation that college is just a thing you must do and that grunt labor was a thing you did not want to do but for some reason was a thing you also must do, the sudden collective agreement we'd all be connected online and to our phones all the time, the fact that a me-too movement was still a decade away despite being 40 years on from important feminist movements, that native peoples are not all dead and we'll just fight over how to correctly eulogize them but actually they are still alive and need true recognition, etc., etc. But even if it's true that I'm unfairly biased, it just means that an enormous cohort of North Americans (at least) should find something to relate to in this novel.
Very glad this was written and so glad to have read it. This is a keeper.
Full disclosure: I once emailed the author c.2007-2008 for no other reason than to express my gratitude for her writing and wish her continued success. She briefly thanked me for the kind words. I don't know that this fact has any bearing on my review of her novel, but there it is.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Car accident, Alcohol, Sexual harassment