House of Sugar - Softcover

Kraatz, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0978124200 ISBN 13: 9780978124205

Publisher: Conundrum Pr, 2011

Synopsis

House of Sugar collects a two-year run of strips in Halifax's The Coast Weekly. Originally published in 2006 (by Tulip Tree) these small, four-panel episodes, with their heavy lines and slightly squashed faces, resemble high school drawings that have grown up. The collection's themes are consistent: our immediate pasts are messy and painful places, but if we look so far back that we have to squint to see, everything is strong and elegant. Autobiographical anecdotes make up the bulk of House of Sugar, detailing Kraatz' childhood in the prairies and West Coast. Recurring characters include her wise and sentimental grandfather, her unattainable peers, and her treasured brother. The book is also peppered with appearances by the various idealized men and women from the 1940s who comfort and inspire Kraatz throughout her life. The stories contain tales of Ogopogo, reasons to not become a makeup artist, Kraatz's experimentation with drugs, and the deflating realization that trapeze artists get runs in their stockings, too. House of Sugar also boasts an introduction by Canadian singer-songwriter Joel Plaskett.

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca Kraatz hails from Vancouver Island and now calls Dartmouth, Nova Scotia her home.

From Publishers Weekly

This strip ran in Halifax, Nova Scotia's The Coast Weekly from 2004 to 2006, and the collection shows that gems can come from obscure sources. These small, autobiographical-feeling four-panel episodes, with their heavy lines and slightly squashed faces, resemble high school drawings that have grown up. The style is oddly suited to the creator's obsession with the 1940s, such as when she compares a fall day to Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Lauren Bacall. The narrator delves into strange areas—small mesh rolls of hair called "rats" that women once used in hairdos—and seems happiest with love when it's gone. "I turned the high-powered sprayer onto our love letters and turned them into a pulpy pile of mush," she says. Later, when trapped in a barn with her heartthrob, she wants to escape. Bits of magic realism pop up unexpectedly, such as her brother's magic deer or the observation that "some of your soul can leave your body and be snatched up by a greedy baby." Completely lacking in wham-bam punch lines, Kraatz has a meandering, melancholy voice that seduces with its wistfulness, and this story is likely to appeal to any woman who ever flirted with anything alternative, or anyone who prizes an independent mind. (Nov.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Conundrum Pr
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0978124200
• ISBN 13: 9780978124205
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112