Epileptic - Softcover

David B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2844140858 ISBN 13: 9782844140852

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2002

Synopsis

Visually recounts the story of the author's childhood in the 1960s and 1970s as his family experiments with acupuncture, spiritualism, and macrobiotic diets in search of a cure for his brother's epilepsy.

About this title

About the Author

David B. is a founding member of L'Association, a six-man group of French cartoonists who banded together as publishers in 1990 and have revolutionized European comics with their iconoclastic approach to formats, subject matter, and style. He lives in Montreuil, France.

Reviews

Adult/High School-This autobiographical work plumbs the psychological, social, and symbolic reaches of the author's experiences in a family that must deal with a devastating disease. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in France's Loire Valley, Jean-Christophe developed grand mal epilepsy around the age of 11. Pierre-Francois, nine, observes his brother's battle with the physical and social implications of the disease; their parents' efforts to find management of it through medical, macrobiotic, and even psychic interventions; and the author's own development in this milieu as a boy obsessed with history and warfare and as a dedicated artist. This is a full-strength novel with well-developed characters, subplots concerning both World Wars, and riffs on the popular culture of the period in which hip Westerners looked to the East for solutions to health and spiritual maladies. David B.'s black-and-white panels spin with Jungian figures of serpents and offer snapshots of commune kitchens, woodlots haunted by his recently deceased grandfather, and street alleys where neighborhood children fantasize the distant past and uncharted future. This volume comprises half of the eight titles originally published in French, and readers will eagerly await its companion. Teens who have read Don Trembath's Lefty Carmichael Has a Fit (Orca, 2000) or Lauren Slater's Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir (Random, 2000) may find this book to be the one that encourages them to become aficionados of sophisticated, graphic-novel literature.
Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

David B. is one of the founders of the French experimental comics collective L'Association, and this hallucinatory work (the first of two volumes) is a sort of refracted story of his childhood when he was known as Pierre-Fran‡ois. On a literal level, it's a fascinating memoir of how his brother's epilepsy became the driving force of his family's life in the 1960s and '70s. Desperate to find a cure for his brother's condition, his parents turn to ascetic macrobiotic cults, deeply esoteric spiritualists and more in search of something that might help him. They encounter all manner of cruelty and quackery but occasionally find something that helps. B.'s own fascination with history and war seems to protect him from the despair that perpetually surrounds the family. His visual retelling of their suffering is a masterpiece of surrealistic cartooning and fantastic imagery. Readers see B. as a child; as his mind blurs the distinction between reality, metaphor and fiction, so does his art. He draws a macrobiotic healer as a cartoon tiger, and fills the book with iconic metaphors for disease (epilepsy is like a demon from a cave drawing). His has a fascination with Swedenborgian mysticism and Samurai warriors, who are vehicles for gorgeously stylized b&w illustrations of warfare and bloodletting. The narrative thread peels aside for digressions to depict young Pierre-Fran‡ois' dreams or to carefully denote the family's endless efforts to find relief for their son and ultimately for themselves. Almost every panel is a graphic balancing act between representation and psychological distortion. This is truly a remarkable and powerful piece of comics narration.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* Already published in Europe to great acclaim, this powerful graphic novel launches a series that promises to set an ambitious new standard for autobiographical comics. While centered on the author's brother Jean-Christophe's lifelong battle with epilepsy, the book tells the larger story of a troubled family undertaking a desperate odyssey to find a cure. Their peripatetic existence takes them throughout France as they desperately consult psychiatrists, join a Zen macrobiotic commune, resort to spiritualism, and finally consent to Jean-Christophe's institutionalization. The young David B. seeks solace in a vivid fantasy life, and the book's most visually spectacular passages depict his dreams, filled with mythical dream creatures portrayed in expansive panels reminiscent of Persian art. B.'s simple, economical drawing style--European comics artists don't share the American reluctance to apply a cartoonish look to serious stories--belies the work's structural complexities, such as flashbacks within the flashbacks to David's childhood. This journey through the wayward 1970s has universal appeal, such that many readers of this book will eagerly await learning where the subsequent decades took David B and his family. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 2844140858
• ISBN 13: 9782844140852
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168