Scan barcode
A review by rachelcabbit
Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment by Bryan Talbot
5.0
I have been meaning to read this graphic novel for so long and I don't know what stopped me! This is a beautiful love story to Sunderland and to Alice in Wonderland. Talbot, an adopted son of Sunderland rather than a native, have penned and illustrated the most schizophrenic yet meticulous history of the oft forgotten City in the North East of England and all of its connections with Lewis Carroll and his famous children's books and poems.
As a Mackem myself, I was fascinated to read about facts I had only half heard, and some of which I had never heard. The art installations I regularly walked past as a child were finally explained to me and their purpose dawned upon me. Very clever!
The use of photography as well as illustration was excellent, and each page burst with images and colour. It is almost enough to give you a headache! I read the book in one sitting, marvelling at how Talbot captured my hometown and at all of the brushes with fame that Sunderland has had. It was refreshing to see a book on North-East history that wasn't saturated with a tonne of references to our noisy neighbour to the North (Newcastle) though their inclusion in the history could not be completely avoided.
While I always knew about the links to Alice, from growing up here, it was fabulous to see it all explored - even links by various ancestors and distant relations.
I found it sad in a way, to see the historical Sunderland come to life, because our council has taken so much of it away from us, however there is still so much still present. The Empire Theatre (where once I worked as an usher a few years back) is just as portrayed in the novel, though Talbot forgets to mention the interesting history of the ghost of Molly Moselle, a stage manager who disappeared without a trace in 1949 and who has been spotted around the place! And the fact that Vesta Tilley supposedly haunts the place too.
And there were a few other ghost stories about Hylton Castle he neglected to mention, however the graphic novel was already quite long and so I can forgive him missing some things out.
It is a fantastic graphic-documentary told in a meta, disjointed fashion that completely pulled me in with its combo of crazy narrative style, local history and literary history.
As a Mackem myself, I was fascinated to read about facts I had only half heard, and some of which I had never heard. The art installations I regularly walked past as a child were finally explained to me and their purpose dawned upon me. Very clever!
The use of photography as well as illustration was excellent, and each page burst with images and colour. It is almost enough to give you a headache! I read the book in one sitting, marvelling at how Talbot captured my hometown and at all of the brushes with fame that Sunderland has had. It was refreshing to see a book on North-East history that wasn't saturated with a tonne of references to our noisy neighbour to the North (Newcastle) though their inclusion in the history could not be completely avoided.
While I always knew about the links to Alice, from growing up here, it was fabulous to see it all explored - even links by various ancestors and distant relations.
I found it sad in a way, to see the historical Sunderland come to life, because our council has taken so much of it away from us, however there is still so much still present. The Empire Theatre (where once I worked as an usher a few years back) is just as portrayed in the novel, though Talbot forgets to mention the interesting history of the ghost of Molly Moselle, a stage manager who disappeared without a trace in 1949 and who has been spotted around the place! And the fact that Vesta Tilley supposedly haunts the place too.
And there were a few other ghost stories about Hylton Castle he neglected to mention, however the graphic novel was already quite long and so I can forgive him missing some things out.
It is a fantastic graphic-documentary told in a meta, disjointed fashion that completely pulled me in with its combo of crazy narrative style, local history and literary history.