Teo Degas' Books & Decks

Written by one of the most renowned writers in Korea, Lee Seung-U (or I Seungu),

The Private Life of Plants tells the story of a dysfunctional family narrated by the youngest sibling Kihyon. Uhyon, the oldest brother, a former photographer, develops a rare post-traumatic disorder after getting his legs amputated and becomes hyper-sexualised, psychologically self-destructive and locked inside. His younger brother, Kihyon, the narrator of the story, has to deal with some of his brother's needs and problems, his sense of guilt, feels alienated from his family, and keeps an active interest on his brother's former girlfriend Sunmi. Their parents seem to be also alien to each other; they barely speak to each other or spend time together, and seem to ignore Kyhon. This is the starting point of an exploration of Kyhon's psyche and view of the world, and an in-depth approach to the complexity of human relationships and of the world we perceive.

The Private Life of Plants is a beautifully written book -- very lyric, poetic and artistic at times, but very rough, sad, and confronting others. The characters are inquisitive, soulful, complex, and very human. There is a good dose of han in the book, that melancholy so specific of the Korean people. There is more to them than the beginning of the story makes one think. The story takes you to the same places where Kyhon is heading, and those places are a wonderful exploration of the nature of love, desire, family and the magic in everyday life.

THEMES

There are several prominent themes, masterly weaved, in the story, dialogues, and overall conception of the novel.

|~v|v~| We all have our point of view, we perceive, think and feel subjectively. The book makes very interesting reflections on the objectivity of the photographic camera, and the eye in front of behind the camera. Nobody is totally objective: 

"Nadie puede ser totalmente objetivo. Todo documento refleja necesariamente el punto de vista y la posición de la persona que lo ha elaborado. De igual modo, el que hace fotos expresa su punto de vista y su posición mediante el ángulo y el enfoque del aparato fotográfico." (loc. 562-566)
 [Nobody can be completely objective. Any document necessarily reflects the point of view and the standpoint of the person who makes it. In the same way, a person who makes a photo expresses their point of view and standpoint through the angle and the focal point of of the camera.] 

The eyes are the mind, and the mind is a coloured lens. The more people live in their head the less they can know other human beings, who have an existence outside the other's mind. The Private Life of Plants shows how difficult can be to connect with other people's souls, to get to know their real selves, to understand them, even if that "other" is a member of one's family. Kyhon's eyes are ours, uninformed and judgemental, because, like a photographer with a camera, he has a focal point, a framing and an angle. Like Kyhon, sometimes we just decide that our parents or siblings are something, without having anything to support the idea. We fabricate our views unintentionally; but sometimes we are lucky enough to be confronted with a reality that does not match what we believe about other people. People are sometimes something else or something more. Kyhon gets to know his family at the same time we do, page by page. 

"Esa faceta de mi padre era muy emotiva y desconocida para mí. Ahora me daba cuenta de lo poco que lo conocía. Y no sólo a mi padre. Me preguntaba también cuánto conocía a mi madre y a mi hermano, y tuve que admitir que los conocía muy poco." (loc. 1022-1024).
[That facet of my father was very emotive and unknown to me. Then, I realised how little I knew him. Not only my father. I asked myself how much I knew my mother and my brother, and I had to admit that I didn't know them much either.]

|~v|v~| Love has many faces, people can love and express love in many different ways. We see the different way Kyhon, Uhyon and their parents express love. Perhaps the most moving is that of the father, which takes the reader aback because is the most pure and unselfish of them all and the least obvious. Love is presented as the union of two parts of a soul. Love is powerful, the fuel of live. Love is also blind. Seung-U succeeds at showing what is infatuation and what is real love without preaching that one thing is better than other.

“Hay muchas maneras de querer”, me dije a mí mismo. El contenido del amor puede ser igual, pero la forma de querer es múltiple y diferente. Cien personas tienen cien diferentes formas de amar. Sólo los amores excepcionales se parecen. (Loc. 2820-2822). 

[There are many ways of loving, I told myself. The content of love can be the same, but the way of expressing love is multiple and different. One hundred people have one hundred different ways of loving. Only exceptional love stories are similar.]

"Aristófanes dice que el amor es el deseo de ser, en dos, un solo cuerpo. Eso mismo dice Platón en el Banquete —respondió ella." (loc. 1722-1723).
[Aristophanes says that love is the wish to be, in two, one  only body. The same says Plato in his Banquet, replied her.]

|~v|v~| Sexuality is an expression of the self and of the soul. There is a good deal of reflection about the nature of sexual desire in the novel. Kyhon feels repulsion at Sunmi engaging in a sexual relationship that does not fulfil her as the man uses, abuses and disrespects her; Sunmi feels inside that she deserves it and lets this man do that to her. Uhyon channels her inner pain through a "violent" sexuality, self-destructive, and anti-erotic because it is an expression of his inner pain and wounded soul. Soh channels her deep love for the man of her life through her sexual union with him in a magical pure and spiritual way, which  shows the state of her soul. The dichotomy we are presented with is not manichean -- all of these experiences are expressions and manifestations of the same thing -- The body, even the erotic one, is a connector with our inner life and and expression of the state of the soul. 

|~v|v~| Everything in Nature has a soul with which we can connect, plants and trees included. Uhyon tries to soothe his deep pain through a lyric connection with trees, as he sees them as soulful beings, connectors of earth and even, sustainers of time, and communicators between the human and the divine. He wants to heal his pain and his soul by becoming a tree. In a way, the book reminds me of The Vegetarian where we find the same obsession to unite with trees and Nature through the physical body. His father has a very similar reverence towards plants, which he considers living creatures with which one can communicate if speaking from the heart and with honesty. Kyhon initially has a view of the forest a la "Hansel & Gretel", therefore, dark, dangerous, untrustworthy, the home of witches and nasty beings. However, the more he gets to know to Uhyon and his father, the more he starts seeing the spirit of the trees as connectors of the human and the divine; eventually, he comes across the palm tree in Namcheon and understands what his brother feels and Kyhon experiences the true interconnectivity of the world.

The almost-Universal theme of the symbolic tree, the soulful tree, the tree of knowledge, and the personified tree is part of beliefs, cosmogonies, mythologies, legends and religions of different cultures around the globe: from the Bible to the Druids, from the vast cultures of Antiquity in the Mediterranean and the Middle East to the Celtic people and the Nordics, from the Aborigines of Australia to the Native Americans and beyond. Besides, this subject is very dear to the Korean collective psyche and culture.The link is found in the Korean shamanistic tradition of Musok or Musok-kyo, which is based on the belief that animals, plants and rocks have a spirit, that humans can communicate with them. What is more, there is a strong reverence to trees, who are believed to have individual personalities. The Private Life of Plants melts and fuses all of these elements in an organic way. However, there is a strong explicit emphasis on Greek mythology.

Mi padre dijo, en un tono suave, que los árboles también eran seres vivos, también tenían sentimientos, y añadió: La superficie de la planta percibe tu corazón a través de tu mano  (loc. 1461-7). Las plantas saben leer la mente del hombre.(loc. 1472-1473). Las plantas sienten como seres vivos. Son capaces de sentir dolor, tristeza y felicidad. Saben distinguir instintivamente si el hombre miente o dice la verdad. Un amor falso no provoca una respuesta. Para estar en comunicación con las plantas, hay que ser sincero, como cuando se trata con las personas (loc. 1475-1477).
[My father told me, in a soft tone, that trees are also living creatures and have feelings, and he added, "The surface of a plant perceives your heart through your hand. (...) Plants know how to read the mind of a man. (....) Plants feel as living creatures do and are able to feel pain, sadness and happiness. They can instinctively know whether a man is lying or saying the truth. A fake love doesn't provoke an answer. To be in communication with plants one has to be sincere, as when one treats with people."]

¿Habría algún bosque que no fuera sagrado? Todos los bosques guardan en su seno la génesis primera. Los bosques fueron el primer templo divino y algunos árboles de ese templo fueron adorados por sus propiedades divinas. (loc. 1330-1332).
[Is there any forest that is not sacred? Every forest keeps in its bosom the primeval genesis. Forests were the first divine temple and some trees in that temple were revered for their divine properties.]

|~v|v~| Reality and dream are weaved in myriad ways and the world is just both. The borders that separate them aren't clear or defined. On the contrary, the more they mingle, the more magical reality is and the more real the dream becomes. Although the theme is barely present at the beginning of the book, it becomes stronger and more defined as the story advances, and becomes prominent in the last fourth part of the book, when we see dream and reality connect in very tangible ways. When they connect, we see the characters moving from a world of hatred, guilt, repression, disconnection and pain, to a world that, although it is strange and inexplicable, feeds their soul and lets them know themselves, to communicate, to soothe their wounds and to heal. The story about the palm tree at the edge of the cliff in Namcheon and Sunmi's dream in the car are really beautiful and very lyric and a depiction of that.

"Su presencia lo hacía todavía más irreal, pues no es que ella entrara en el sueño, sino que ese espacio se convertía en un sueño gracias a ella. Mientras ella soñaba, el mundo de su sueño se agrandaba y en él se establecía ella como la heroína." (Loc. 2446-2448)
 [Her presence made it even more unreal, because it is not that she had entered the dream, but the space had become a dream thanks to her. While she was dreaming her dream's world was becoming larger and she was becoming the heroine in it.]

 "Le dije que ya era un árbol, porque el que sueña con ser árbol es el que posee el alma del árbol, y el que posee su alma, ya es un árbol." (loc.2709-2710).
[I told him that he was already a tree because somebody who dreams about being a tree is somebody who already has the soul of a tree, and somebody who has its soul is already a tree.]

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO...

The Private Life of Plants,  in the end, is a meandering walk towards wholeness and communion with the world, the Universe, and with Nature of which we are part. The characters start walking toward that wholeness, in different ways. Uhyon wants to heal his soul by connecting with his soul but since he can't do so directly he tries to connect with trees' soul. Kyhon wants to be one with his brother and with his family, to be seen, to be loved and be one with them . People become one with their lovers and their bodies become one. Kyhon's eye detaches from the mind and sees the world in its complexity and wholeness embracing the others for who they really are. Wounds start to heal and healing is becoming whole. Soh revels her secret and becomes true to herself and fully honest with her family, so she becomes whole. The family makes an effort to communicate better, so they are walking towards wholeness. Trees become personified, and one with the humans they merge. Dreams and reality fuse and integrate. Plants and humans talk to each other as they are part of the same. The Universe is one. Wholeness is oneness, union, integration and communion. Union with your self, with others, with reality, with Nature, with your dreams, with the magic we are and we are surrounded by.

TRANSLATION

I read the book on Kindle in the Spanish translation because there is no Kindle edition of this book in English. The translation into Spanish is wonderful, and one really forgets is a translation. The Spanish used is classic and elegant and I think will be enjoyed by both Latin-American and Spanish readers. Just a couple of sentences kept me munching because they sound a bit thick, or perhaps a bit surprising, and found the use of some capitals (or lack of them) and long dashes confusing, but that is just me being a picky reader.

RENDERING FOR KINDLE

There are just a couple or footnotes in the book, but they are misplaced and change position when changing the sizing of the font. Footnotes work best in Kindle when placed at the back and are properly linked, so one doesn't find them in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand, it seems that the conversion into digital book came with a large number of typos derived of improper linking and unlinking of words, and some unnecessary spacing between full stops. Some of the typos I noticed are:

~ inuti-lizada (Loc. 2498).
~preo cupara más. (Loc. 2217).
~ahora?. .”  (loc. 2107).
~arrastra do (loc. 1865).
~men-tido (loc. 1227).
~comprender lo. (loc. 1204).
~per-seguido (loc. 1193)
~sonrisadulce (loc. 1079). 

~ juego . Me (loc. 1033).
~ abstraí do, (loc. 777).
~ con-secuencia (loc.  729).
~ obstácu lo (Kindle Location 660).
~ canciónse (Kindle Location 647). E
~ el respal do (loc. 511).
~ insen-sata (loc. 417).
~ confir-marlas. (loc. 399-400).
~ ve-hículo, (Kindle Location 73). 

IN SHORT

The Private Life of Plants is a great little book -- Lyric but confronting, complex but beautiful, The characters are walking into wholeness and into more fulfilling lives and emotions. The way Seung-U looks at the world in this novel is original, complex, mysterious and very soulful. You can this novel as a straightforward novel and and forget about it when you close it. In my case the book has stayed with me. because reminds me of some experiences I have had with some areas of the world, pieces of land, parks and trees -- an inexplicable but deep sense of connexion and attachment to something that is out of me. At times, when I read some books, I experience a deep sense of connection with the writer, as if the words had been written for me, and this is the case here. Nature has a voice that sings to us... sometimes through books and writers. Seung-U deserves more attention and accolades in the West than he has 

had so far. What a great writer.

NOTES

> The novel ends with a note by the author himself, where he briefly explains how he came up with the idea of the story and what he has trying to do with the characters. I find that sort of notes wonderful, because they are a pinhole into the mind of the creator, how a simple image of two trees can give birth to a wonderful story like this.  
> The Private Life of Plants was originally published in Korean in the year 2000.

THE PLOT
Elijah is a highly-reputed veteran officer of the Philosophical Police in the galactic Union. His job is solving conflicts by focusing on discovering  the core problem to bring conflict to a halt. Life in the Union is egalitarian. People don't have to die unless they want, when and how they want.  Their bodies can be  cloned and merged at will, each clone or echo will share common memories and create new ones. When a merging occurs, only the primary  body survives and all the memories are merged into one, but the oldest ones are destroyed in the process. The Union has appointed Elijah as mediator in the conflict between the Ganedans and the Alephs, two civilisations that are on the brink of war for something that happened centuries ago. At the same time, Elijah's personal life is leading him to question whether he wants to live beyond his current body's life span and what matters to him most in life. 

THE STORY AND MAIN THEMES
I love abstract books, philosophical quests, science fiction and stories that explore new territories in the world of graphic novels. Last Days of an Immortal does so perfectly. The novel really gets under your skin, in a  very subtle but pervasive way, perhaps not the first time you read it, perhaps the second; that was my case. The world depicted and the story are intriguing, thought-provoking and pose readers awesome existential questions. The story, most importantly, has a heart, a gaseous-like sentimentality that is not dramatic or overly out there. I found the concept of echoing really ingenious, like an organic positive split-personality disorder. I loved some of the humour in the novel, like when Elijah sleeps with one of his echoes. He and his self. 

Vehlman's Last Days of an Immortal is an almost-happy Utopia. A world that is multi-racial and multi-ethnic. An egalitarian society where gender differences are non-existent, where men and women pair with people of both sexes, because the body doesn't matter. An age when women are strong, intelligent and feminine in different ways and formats. A time where age and death do not matter per se. A world where the way you look or what you wear is not relevant; you can dress or go naked, as you wish. A space where people from different cultures live together even though they not always understand each other. A society in which conflict is managed in a way that people don't hurt each other on purpose. In short, a society where judgement is minimal and conflict is analysed and tackled through philosophical reasoning. 

To me, the most interesting questions are always those embedded in the story, those never said but whispered, those hidden in the story itself for the reader to discover and reveal. Some of the ones that came to me are the following:

~*~ What does Philosophy serve for in our world? Is Philosophy an empty babble?   Philosophy is presented as something practical, usable, a successful tool to 'get' the world and the other, a door to approaching alterity. Philosophers aren't verbose people, are very sensitive tuned people who solve real problems and conflicts. That is utterly cool to me. I love the way the story shows that Philosophy is not empty rhetoric but a way of approaching reality and other sentient beings.There is an episode in the novel that shows this perfectly. Elijah is confronted by a guy in the spaceport by an annoying guy that tells him what philosophers do this and that, mocks the way they talk, but Elijah replies to him:

"You're confusing rhetoric and philosophy" (pp. 101). 

~*~  What is the key to interpersonal communication? Is it possible to really understand the other, the "alien"?

 To be perfectly frank, humanoid and non-humanoid races are equally hard to understand. -- What do affect us, however, are the expectations we bring to the encounter. -- Part of us imagines contact will go more smoothly with aliens who look like us. In the end, our disappointed expectations are to blame for making it seem more difficult. (p. 6) 

~*~ Can we trust our eyes without questioning ourselves about what we have just seen?

The story stays, be aware that what you see is not a perceptive projection. You cannot fully trust your senses or your reasoning without using meta-consciousness or double questioning yourself. 

 "You just don't ask yourself the same questions when you see things and when you hear about them, is all. You take in things differently." (p. 46) "We think the same things, to varying degrees. We suffer from the same worry -- And this has formed a knot in our minds. It keeps us from making any progress on the case" (p. 130)

~*~ Can we judge other cultures without knowing their basic codes and how they approach reality? 

I thought the way Elija's planet works is just awesome to understand how people should approach refugees and immigrants when they are from other cultures and have  different languages and social and interpersonal codes. Also, which level of understanding we hope from there, and which problems may arise out of just simply cultural misunderstanding. The whole episode with G'Ohi shows just that.

"We knew their way of life was filed by a kind of ritual theatre, but I didn't realise the degree of subtlety available. -- Everything's a game for them. Everything is theatre, down to the last detail. -- At various key moments in their life cycles , Ganedans are randomly issued librettos describing the character they must play: job, social status, sexuality, language, etc. --Upon arriving, I myself received an offworlder's libretto indicating the limits of what I could say or do." (p. 47)

The story is a ode to being understanding, to getting to know the others by getting to understand their cultures, their codes, their feelings and the motives behind their behaviour, and to solve any conflict by getting to understand if there is a conflict at all.

The story is a swan chant to the body as receptacle of the soul not as an empty vessel that can be discarded; in that regard, the sex scenes aren't there for the sake of provoking; there is a direct connection between Elijah's feelings and his lovemaking in his old body instead of using a younger more attractive one.

The story is a love song to the value of close friendship and love itself, which is what matters the most in the end. If we erase those memories we cherish, those that made us better people and gave us inner joy, are we really alive?

"You will only lose a few of your oldest memories. Isn't that the fate of all immortals, in the end-to forget our past?"  (p. 32)

My main criticism to the novel is what I experienced the first time I read it -- it is a bit cold, it feels a bit cerebral and not emotional enough. So it is not everybody's cup of tea. However, there is heart in the novel, is just that Elijah's feelings and sensitivity aren't overly verbalised or dramatic, just hinted and developed throughout the story in a very subtle but distinct way.  

THE ARTWORK

De Bonneval's artwork in the book is very elegant and minimalist, with very open spaces and landscapes, and minimal human figures, and drawn in in a very soft black and white, which becomes even softer when depicting the vanishing of an echo or when narrating episodes of the past. There are some beautifully creative and elaborate countryside landscapes, some of them naturalist and others creative. Some extra fleur is added when depicting the Ganedians and the Alephs, human gatherings and the transportation hub.

The drawing  style and imagery reminded me of some futuristic comics of the 1970s and 1980s mostly because the human figure seems to be surrounded by vast open spaces in which humans look diminute beings.

Regarding the design, some decorative arts and architecture of the 1960s-1970s came to mind: Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture and the glassy interiors of the former, Miró's mobile sculptures, the avant-garde opera costumes designed for The Ballets Russes by several famous artists in the early 20th century, and several interior designs, especially chairs, very typical of the 1960s-1970s interior design.

Overall the drawing has inner coherence and, although it feels familiar, it doesn't remind me of anything that is not this novel. The drawing feels expansive at times, when Nature and the landscape dominates, but it is quite constricted and minimal others, usually in one-to-one conversations, merely because the text is as important as the artwork and there is a space constriction in some vignettes.

I love the lettering used in the book because it is not futuristic, it is a handwritten-alike, personal and human writing that contrasts with the very cold lab-ish interiors and ways of living in Elijah's world. 

RENDERING FOR KINDLE

I was wondering why this ebook was so big  in size, the novel being quite short and in BW. Well, that was until used the ebook and I realised that double tapping allows readers to individuate vertical vignettes to full-screen size, which is awesome. Besides, browsing page by page is great, as the sizing of each page allows readers to pinch in an out as much as you want without losing quality of image. My only complaint is that it is not possible to add a note.

WARNING

There is full explicit sex scenes in the book, so not a book for children.

If I had to describe Ghostopolis in a few words I would say "Fun and adventure cinematic story." This is a book for young teens and adults young at heart. Ghosthopolis tells the adventures of Garth Hale after he is accidentally sent to the world of the afterlife. Frank Gallows (the agent who sent Garth there) and his ex-girlfriend ghost Claire Voyant, both former members of the Supernatural Immigration Task Force, decide to go to his rescue and  get him back to earth. Garth's strong life force attracts the attention of Ghostopolis's ruler Vaugner, who tries to capture him to get Garth's energy and use it for evil purposes. Garth happens to find her grandpa Cecil right after landing, although in a form of a child of his age who keeps growing and becoming an adult during the story.

This is  an old-style comic book, one of those I grew up reading when I was a kid: entertaining, imaginative, good graphics, full colour, battles, adventure, the heroes and the badies, fun, lots of fun!, monsters, skulls, skeletons, castles, mummies. One of those books you cannot put down until you finish reading it in a seating.The book targets children, so the narrative has the common clichés of the genre, and of course is predictable, but that doesn't rest interest or fun to the reading. 

The adventures being mostly in the afterlife, one would expect macabre and very dark images, but the contrary is true. All the creatures in the afterworld are likeable, funny, naughty  and not scary at all.  There is a bit of Christian symbolism in the book but it is very subtle, not straightforward, and not preachy at all. The creator is called Joe the builder, a Tuskegee airman, an Afro-American pilot of the WW2.

One of the things I love the most about the book is how cinematic it feels, and how funny is. The character of Frank Gallows is really a cracker, cheeky and likeable. Some of the names are also very funny, like Claire Voyant, or Boogie Boogie Avenue. Vaughner, the bad-man, looks very much like a punk-rock Bylly Idol, although the mouth is very much Marilyn Mason, and he is wearing skinny jeans! Some of the dialogues are also light-hearted and full of pun:

"Assemble my fastest team of night mares, a company of royal skeleton guards, and a carriage for thet wo lovebirds" [the skeleton king says when ordering to prepare his horses] (p. 183)

"Well show them that you don't have to have organs to have guts!" [the skeleton says] (p. 194)

The novel immediately reminds one of Ghostbusters, and of some of Tim Burton's early movie, in which the extraordinary and the ordinary live in dysfunctional harmony. However, to be fair, we cannot reduce the plot or the novel to a Burton-alike story because darkness seems always more natural than the normal world or normal people in Burton's Universe, and that is not the case here.  Unlike Ghostbusters, the ghosts in this novel aren't on earth to scare anybody, they are there to enjoy the peaceful surroundings as the afterlife is a bit messy.  In that regard, Man in black seems more in tune with this story, especially having a group of police officers devoted to capture intruder ghosts and bring them back to their own world. 

I don't think the book has anything really that would bother parents to give their children, even if they are agnostics, lapse Christians, Buddhists or Hindus.
 

PLOT HOLES

> If Garth is dying, why is his energy in the afterworld so humongous? After all he has just a few weeks of life left. I think the fact that he was so sick was a reason why the accident happened; otherwise, the plasma device would have not been taken him. Just saying!

> The appearance of Garth's son is senseless and breaks the rules of believality. One understands that the afterlife has not time or space. Great, but for the sake of the story, please show old Cecil.

THE GRAPHIC ART

Dough TenNapel is not only the author of the story, is also the main illustrator, drawer and penciler/inker.  He has a great talent and can do anything: beautiful rural escapes, cityscapes or action-packed crazy scenes. The arrangement of the vignettes is very dynamic and never boring, and every few pages there is a B&W silhouetted vignette inserted between the others, a kind of wink to the reader. I think that TenNapel shines when he creates simpler images, less busy visually, which are among my favourites. I loved the graphic depiction and development of some of the characters: Claire, Frank, Vaughner, the skeleton king, and all the mumies. I didn't like the depiction of Garth, his mother, and I hesitate about Joe as much .   

I found the subdued and washed out colouring very good, similar to  that in old vintage comics. Not my favourite sort of colouring, but splendid nevertheless.There is a large group of colourists who have to be praised: The lead colourists are Katherine Gardner and Tom Rhodes, helped by assistants Matt Laskodi, Aaaron Crayne, Wes Scog, Rick Randolph, Kenny Hitt, Ethan Nicolle, Eric Barnscume, Dirk Erick Schulz, Sean McGowan and David Kowalyk.

The author of the lettering is not mentioned in the credits, but the lettering is one of the best things in this book. I absolutely loved the lettering fonts, sizing and colouring, even the accurate onomatopoeyic wording of it.  The wording felt like real sounds in my head, not like other times when I read the ambience noises in a comic and I don't hear anything in my head. The lettering perfectly suits the book overall look and style, and it is in harmony with it. 

MIND
More for mid-grade children than for proper teens, I think. I would say about 8-13y.o.a. Older children would be already reading adults stuff or complex books to feed their hunger for adulthood.

NOTE

A movie based on the novel is in development at the time of this review. TenNapel gave an interview about comic creation where he gives some details about the film. The interview is on YouTubbe (1h +).

The city of Ember is the first episode of a series of four novels narrating the adventures of Lina & Doon. They are two teenagers who live in a mysterious and isolated city-state called Ember just assigned their profession at the end of their school days. They start to question whether the life in the city is good for them and become unhappy when the power outages and food shortage become increasingly frequent and they discover that the mayor is involved in some serious activities. After finding and deciphering a broken note with instructions on how to exit the city, they decide to escape. 

THE STORY
 The novel has the format of a traditional serial novel, with a lot of slow pace that builds up to the end, when the real action commences and a cliff-hanger is provided for you to hold on until next episode. I have never heard of read the original Jeanne DuPrau's novels or seen the movie, so I cannot comment on Dallas Middaugh's adaptation. However, I expected, a priori, a bit of chopping off for having done for the graphic book. Although I enjoyed the graphic novel, I felt that the story was a bit hurried at times, a bit too slow others, and a bit superficial others, especially with regards to the relationship between the characters.

Although I enjoyed the novel, I felt that the story was a bit hurried at times, a bit too slow others, and a bit superficial others, especially with regards to the relationship between the characters.  Also, I found some of the "next morning" text unnecessary, as the story itself and the images tell you that without the need to write it all the time.

The City of Ember, nevertheless, is a delightful science fiction story that is not just what it looks like. 

EXPLORING THE BOOK 

Many themes are touched in this novel and you can use the book to start a conversation with your children or with your students on different subjects. Some of the questions that came to mind were:
~~ Is it OK  to question authority?
~~ If affirmative, in which circumstances?
~~ In which way/s can a Government keep its citizens in the dark? Any examples in your country, region or the world nowadays you think of?
~~ Do you think of any circumstances when keeping somebody in the dark about something could/would  benefit them? 
~~  If you are kept in the dark, how do see what is real and what is not?
~~ Which government system does build a better society and makes individuals happier?
~~ Why do we fear a future of doom instead of dreaming of  a future where society is better?
~~ Can individuals help change society?
~~ Which things would surprise you in your daily life if you didn't take them for granted?
~~ How would you describe the things that surround you if you saw them for the first time ever?
~~ What is needed for any person to *see* the world for what it really is?

~~ Would society be better if instead of choosing our professions, the Government randomly assigned those needed and available?
~~ Would your life be different if instead of following a profession of your interest you were assigned another for life? Could you still develop your talent and qualities in any circumstances and profession disregarding which one is?  Could you still be useful or more useful to society?  Could you be happy?
~~ Do the plot, themes or characters in this book remind you of any others you have previous read?
~~ In which way does this novel relate to the Platonic allegory of the cave?  
~~ In which way is the escape of the womb of a city similar to leaving the parental home when you become an adult?

Niklas Asker is the illustrator of this graphic novel. I love his artwork. He has created an expressive world and a visual narrative that doesn't need of much text to be understood. I never take that for granted. The book feels very cinematic, the composition and arrangement of the vignettes and visual frames is varied and interesting, with interior, exterior and landscape scenes that are always appropriate and feel right to me. I especially love the indoors images as they feel warm and cozy, like a real home. The characters are very expressive as well.

The colouring by Niklas Asker & Bo Ashi is wonderful. The shadow work is amazing and very detailed, and helps tremendously to create ambience and mood. Ember is an underground city so one expects the images to be dark and lighted at the same time. This sort of colouring and lighting is always my cup of tea.

Chris Dickey's lettering is quite classic and, mostly, non-invasive. Dialogues are included in classic balloons, and narrative references in square marquees at the top or bottom of the page; the start of a chapter has a lovely broken piece of paper that mirrors the broken instructions sheet in the story. On the contrary, I didn't like the noise and ambience lettering, which was invasive, too bold, too large, and too much of a fracture. Although it has a narrative value and captures well what is happening in the scene, it is out of tune with the rest of the book's imagery.
  
THE NEXT GRAPHIC EPISODES, ARE THEY COMING  OUT ANY SOON?
There is nothing that I find more frustrating and irritating that  realising that a book I'm reading is just the first part of something that we don't know if is ever to be continued. DuPrau published the other three books in the series a while ago, so I wonder why making a graphic novel just out of the first book and not out of the whole series, or why not publishing the other volumes at a reasonable pace? Is this an ongoing project and other volumes will see the light (pun!) soonish? Or is this just an isolated graphic book that will never been continued? 

RENDERING FOR KINDLE
I am quite happy on how this graphic novel works on Kindle, the quality of graphics and colours in my tablet, and the fact that the size of the downloadable file is reasonable. There is no index in the lateral bar, something that I don't see why not and that could be easily fixed in the electronic edition.  


MIND
This graphic book is just an abridged version on the first book of the series.  This book is mostly for mid-grade children and young teens. If you want to read the whole series you better grab the written books.

What What What?! WTF!

If I had to make a list of the weirdest more shocking books I have ever read, this novel would definitely be one of the top ones.

The Squirrel Machine is a B&W graphic novel set in 19th century New England. It narrates the artistic life of the brothers William and Edmund Torpor, who live out of their father's inheritance with their mother. The Torpors are talented musicians, hyper-creative guys, with a hunger for exploring the unexplored to create unique musical instruments and sounds, which turn out to be quite macabre. The novel is structured in four parts, through which we see the boys go from teens to old people in a non-linear narrative.

This novel has everything I want in a graphic book to be memorable: good graphics, great dose of imagination, uniqueness in style and story, they tease my emotions and/or my intellect, and the story keeps me thinking well after I finish the book. The Squirrel Machine has all of that, but it is not the usual moderate dose, it is the baddaboom dose. This novel is fast, slippery and naughty as a mutant squirrel. The Squirrel Machine is provocative, weird, macabre, disgusting, shocking, erotic, gory, trippy, disturbing, dark, irreverent, thought-provoking, deeply oneiric and sweet and funny at times. All of those ingredients are given to the reader with generosity, not a pinch of spices, more like a whole tin  of them. Can you stomach it? Can you forget the pungent flavour of the spices to discover the ingredient that lies underneath?

MAIN THEMES AND MAIN SUBJECT 

The reviews I have read about his novel, are a mix of enthusiasm and perplexity. What is the novel all about? Is there any story at all? Is there anything to be understood, or just a collection of odd images? That is perhaps what makes the reading captivating, because even if you don't like this book, you want to know, to dig and take out the hidden secret, to "get it".  

To me, this novel is a triptych that creates a whole. The three main panels or themes are: The interrelation between oniric and awaken state, the communication between the conscious and subconscious, and the process of creating Art. They are all linked, I guess because they reflect the kind of artist Rickheit is. Of course, I am just guessing, I don't know the artist and I stumbled upon this book more than I sought it. The written introduction gives many clues about what this book is about, it is just that one forget the words easily, and here one should not.

1/If you tend to your dreams or a dream-worker you will find easier to go through some of the pages in this book. Rickheit might not be a dream-worker but he knows dream language and transposes into his images and story, and I find something amazing. There is a fine line separating the real world and the oneiric work and Rickheit gives readers several clues, first in the written introduction and then in some of the images that directly connect both words. It is raining, Edmund is sleeping and his dream reflect how the exterior world affects the story going in the dream. Most importantly, the world of dreams is symbolic and metaphorical and none of the images and words said is literal, and what is literal is like you have it in front of your nose and cannot see it. The world of dreams is a world of constant puns and metaphors, sometimes very obvious, others very hidden. For example, the erotic scene in the snails is apparently nonsense, but is it? What is the imagery telling? Doesn't intercourse feels like a constant generation and expulsion of slimy juices coming out of the body? Many of the scenes in the book can be read that way. Instead of seeing what you have in the vignette and taking it literally, ask yourself, what would be the message the image is conveying if translated, literally, into words? Is Edmund entering a secret world underneath the bed, or underneath the blankets? Is the image of William's empty skin a way of saying that he is a hollow man that has been discarded and whose life has been shattered into pieces? Is the image of a man falling from a cliff when talking about his love of a woman, a way of depicting the saying "he has fallen for her"? I read many of the images in the book this way and they seemed to make more sense than in an other way. It is also more rewarding, because it forces one to see reality for what is removing the lens of perception. It also forces to properly look at things for what they are not for what they provoke in us or the way we see them.

2/ On the other hand, this novel felt quite Jungian to me! The squirrel seems to sending messages from the upper or conscious world to the underground or the world of the unconscious, from the upper awaken world to the underground world or vice versa. The underground world is always the world of the unconscious, all our hidden self is: the surprising, the shocking, the trauma, the repressed stuff, the genius, the creativity, the fear, the wholly-molly of our inner world, a world that we don't know anything about but influences how we behave in the world. The Squirrel Machine is a constant going and coming to the underground, to the unconscious/subconscious, and the dark stuff comes from there. The relation of the unconscious & the irrational v. the conscious & rational is also exposed in the images and story in ways that aren't apparent either. It shows in the relationship between the Torpors and Emma the pig-keeper, who looks and behaves mostly like an animal, moves and acts out of her basic instincts, the animal part in all of us; however, Emma is also the owner of the book on the Squirrel Machine. She and Edmund connect directly themselves and what Edmund sees made him sick for days. Like looking inside ourselves and seeing our inner monster, our basic animality. The play of conscious/unconscious and rational/irrational are constantly used in the novel. Mrs Torpor, seems to be the only person among the main characters that has some sort of equilibrium.

3/ The exploration of the oneiric, the conscious, the unconscious, the rational and the irrational are are not the subjects of this book, they are as aids to the main subject of the book -- the artistic creative process, the way artistic creation works, the things that artistic creation brings up for the artist, and for society, and what needs to stay and what needs to be destroyed or will destroy the artist. In a way, the artist is presented as a constant explorer of the inner world, an explorer of the unconscious, the explorer of the irrational, the magician that confronts face to face the psyche and its monsters and gets its secrets out. What are the Torpor boys dreaming of? It is mostly of Art, even though their creations turn out to be monstrous and socially unacceptable. It came to me that some of the biggest artists in the 19th and early 20th century, those who revolutionised the world of Art and whose Art creations are now called masterpieces, were considered mad men at the time, their Art was considered disgusting, revolting and monstrous in a way. Like these artists, the Torpor boys have a hunger for creating, for creating something different, for experimentation and for accessing that magic well (pun!) from where inspiration comes from. The creative world has no end, keeps growing and growing, yet it is not a matter of growth, is a matter of the creative side being organic, healthy and beneficial mostly to the creator.

WHAT IS THE SQUIRREL MACHINE? 

What is the Squirrel Machine and what does it do? To me, it is that magic "thing" that connects the inner and outer self, all the parts that form who we are as persons and as human beings. he main question is not what the squirrel machine does, the question is that is beneficial to you and to your Art. Is beneficial for the Torpors? Can they stand it? What does to them? Are they ready to face the machine? There are things inside us that should never been seen by any other person, or just for those who are willing and ready, things that we are not even prepared to face without losing ourselves in them and losing who we are.

FUNNY MOMENTS

The book has also some very funny moments, which serve as a sort of release of the accumulated dark tension. Some of the scene sex are very comic, as are Mrs Torpor's paintings, and the use of the word torpor as surname. Torpor is "a state of mental or physical inactivity", which is the contrary of which these guys are, even the mother is far from torpor. There are little elements depicted in the backgrounds that are really cute.

THE ARTWORK

I have a natural preference for minimalist B&W images and lines, and for gorgeous coloured drawings, for which very busy vignettes, as the ones in this book, are never going to be my cup of tea. However, I cannot but recognise Rickheit's visual talent, and the way he is able to create amazing detailed indoor images, baroque surrealist images, cityscapes and a bit of country escape. I found that facial expressions are, on the contrary, a bit loose or not fully detailed. It might be intentional as most of the characters look a bit under the effects of hallucinogens or just hyperventilated. I like Mrs Torpor, she is balanced and has a face :)) 

WARNING

Despite the cute title and intriguing book cover, The Squirrel Machine is not a a book for children, and certainly not for most adults. Gory, violent, sexual and everything you want your children not to read until they are mature enough to understand it. Strictly for open minded adults, as well.

If you have the stomach, this is an awesome book. I found it equally repulsive and amazing. It is just me and the way I am. But I have read it twice. That is something!

I have this app installed in all my gadgets. I use it on a daily basis and I have done so for many years. I rarely read on paper nowadays, and part of the reason is because how comfortable and enjoyable the reading experience is in Kindle. The fact that the app is free is nothing I take for granted. The Kindle App is an awesome app, but not perfect.

Here a wrap up of my experience using Kindle.

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS

 <> Kindle allows you to read comfortably by letting you adjust the type of font, size of the font, colour of the background, interlinear space and margin space in your reading area.
<> The side bar is very useful to move throughout the book, between books and to access and manage your notes and highlights. You can even edit those in a batches to create a personalised notebook with them.
<> Variety of background colours: white, sepia, green (this is the last addition and quite enjoyable), and black (my least favourite).

<> Normal books download really fast. Graphic books a bit slower but quite fast as well. Of course the speed of your data connection matters, but it is not just that. 

<> All your books are safely stored in the Amazon's cloud, for which you will never lose them. You can erase them from your device if you wish, something I do so as not to bulk the memory of my tablet and phones, or erase them from a place and not for other.

<> The app is fully synchronisable and you can leave a book in page 10 in a gadget, reopen it in another gadget, and the app will tell the last page in the book you were reading and if you want to go there or not.Synchronisation also affects your highlighted text.

<> Many of the issues in the past affecting  graphic and illustrated books, have been solved, especially since Amazon acquired Comixology, as the reading of comics was and is better in the latter because they focus just on comics. At present, there is little difference regarding the quality of the reading experience in Comixology, and Kindle and you can decide whether reading on one or the other depending the book you have purchased. If the editors bother to prepare them accordingly, you will have a fantastic experience, moving around the pages, moving from vignette to vignette, zooming in and out and feeling that you have the comic book in your hands.
<> If you wish, you can access the Kindle shop from your Kindle app, browse books, add them to your lists and purchase them using your preferred settings. 

SUGGESTIONS TO  IMPROVE THE APP,

+ Launch updates when they are ready and trouble free. If Amazon needs testers, search for them and use them before the general public downloads any update.

+ Add a light green colour highlighter. At the moment most of the highlights are warm colours except for blue. I don't like the orange highlighter as it looks ugly in all backgrounds.

+ Add a few more reading fonts to enhance customisation and allow a more enjoyable reading.
+  Allow the use of fonts that are scalable in size, so you can go from size 1 to 2 in several steps is you want, not in just one jump. 

 + Add a light grey reading background and make the black background perhaps a dark grey. The latter works better than black as it offers high contrast for poor-sighted people but it is much enjoyable for reading.

+ Add a visual effect for page-passing (like Google's reader) as this makes the reading more natural and real. That improvement has been due for years. 

+ Fix a dysfunction, or perhaps a bug, that turns some books that have their text fully justified into non-justified when you increase the font size.
+ When cutting and pasting bits of a given book, allow customers to choose whether pasting them with the bibliographic reference in full, as it happens now, or perhaps a short version of it. I use the cut and paste for personal reasons at times, and others for quoting or keeping some work material together, so I don't always need the bibliographic reference pasted in full every single time I copy a bit of text. 

+ Add the customer's list/s to the recommended readings in the home screen area. At the moment, we get the suggestions made by Amazon on its own accord, i.e. following an algorithm. In my case I have never purchased any of the book suggested, so it is a waste of your time and my space, Mr Algorithm. If the items in my book lists were displayed there, I would buy them more often.
+ The developers keep updating the app all the time, which is intrinsically good. I see major updates in Kindle and how they have improved my reading experience and the use and versatility of the app. However, I don't find acceptable the frequency of the updates and the fact that customers are the lab rats to test them. Most developers do the same, to be fair, but the fact that everybody is doing it, shouldn't be an excuse to keep doing it.
+ I would work on a way to compressing the graphic book files still offering great quality of image and detailed zooming. At present, most comics are between 100-200 MB, some of them reaching the 500. OK if you have unlimited Internet, if you use mobile Internet or data-capped Internet, that is a lot of money you are paying for downloading a graphic book. 
 + The search tool is not the best search too around, let me tell you. I would invest some effort in improving it.

OBVIOUS, BUT IT NEEDS TO BE SAID

This is an app developed by a merchant called Amazon to sell us books in its own format, called Kindle books, which Amazon sells to you.  Therefore, you cannot read, oh surprise! surprise?, Kobo books, Pub books, PDF books, documents and or any other book that is not in Kindle format. Actually, you can read PDF and doc. documents, but Kindle is not designed for that and handles them badly. You can still find online tools to convert any of those books into Kindle and use them in your Kindle. You can also use other apps to turn articles in the Wikipedia and read them in Kindle. Yet, doing the opposite is impossible or almost. It used to be possible in the past, but the results were pathetic.  

COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Some books are not really ready for Kindle; therefore, depending on the case, you cannot use the final index, cannot see some of the images properly, or the notes are a bit messed up. Of course, this is not the developers' fault, but it affects my Kindle experience. Amazon should be working to let editors know that their books won't be accepted into Kindle unless properly prepared. Is that or charging Kindle customers less money for ebooks.

MY ADVICE TO CUSTOMERS

Get the app and try it. However, do not update the app frequently unless it is malfunctioning and you see that the new releases have good reviews in Amazon and Google Play. It will save you time, data, and a headache at times.

The Hen who Dreamed she Could Fly is a modern fable for mid-aged children and adults written by the Korean writer Hwang Sun mi.

This is a short and sweet novella, that you will devour in a seating. It has all the elements of successful classic tales for children but will captivate also adults. For a start, the story is Universal as there are no location names, no human names, so the story could be happening anywhere, Korea, USA, or Spain. The story also speaks to any culture, religion or social class. The settings and characters are those of a traditional fable: a barn, anthropomorphic domestic animals; good, bad and evil characters; a hero, a subversion of the animal order of some sort, and an embedded moral lesson. Unlike classic fables and folk tales, the moral lessons in this novella are very contemporary, very 21st century.  One of the main messages of the book is explicitly mentioned:

 Just because you’re the same kind doesn’t mean you’re all one happy family. The important thing is to understand each other. That’s love! (Kindle Locations 984-985).

The reading of the book is far from linear as there are different layers and themes touched at the same time, which will appeal to people of different conditions, even to people who see the world very differently. Two major themes are obvious to me:

1/  Nature simple "is"

2/ Our nature does not always equal Nature

> Does motherhood equal womanhood?
>  Does being of a different race or of the same gender make a difference in being a good parent? Said differently, can a mother from a race or gender that is not that somebody born with make a difference in your growing up?
> Is surrogacy OK?
> Does Nature define your nature?
> What is more cruel, the cruelty of Nature or subverting Nature for the sake of personal fulfilment and getting hurt because of it?

Eventually, what you will enjoy the most about the book is the sentimental part of it, the emotions that this foolish mother of a hen called Sprout brings in you. Interracial inter-religious and gay couple will find their struggle reflected in the fable. Any struggling single mother will cry at finding her harshness and devotion reflected. The book will also touch non-mothers because the story will remind them of the abnegation, love and willingness to overcome obstacles that some mothers have, perhaps their own. 

The characters in this novella  are well drawn. The weasel is my favourite, s/he know who s/he is, his place in Nature, and doesn't  apologise for whom s/he is, what other people think of his/her way of life or the hatred s/he attracts. Sprout the hen is foolish, yet we are immediately drawn to her compassion, selfless love, and the way she stands the harshness of life, even though she put herself in that position.  

The ending is great. A great lesson. Because there are things in life you cannot change or subvert, as simple as that, you like it or not. 

The translation by Kim Chi-Young really flows. The language used is very simple, but I guess that was also in the original as this is, after all, a book mainly  for  children. Yet, sometimes I found some wording that was a bit off to me, probably because English is not my first language. However, there is one occasion that the word of choice seemed not appropriate:

One of the sentences reads "She tried not to lose consciousness, wondering what was happening." (Loc. 64).  

I thought that a talking hen would have never used this expression because hens simply don't have consciousness, something one can easily put aside because this is a fable. However, talking of a hen  in the third person, I would have simply said  "not to faint." I thought, this would be easier to understand for children as well.  This is, of course, a very personal appreciation.

I love the black-and-white minimalist illustrations by Japanese artist Kazuko Nomoto's (aka Nomoco's), who is also the author of the paperback and hardcover's covers. There are very few illustrations in the book, just at the beginning of each chapter, and a flowery line at the end of the chapter. I thought there was room for more illustrations, and that the book would have benefited from more.

As happens with other Korean books that become popular in the West, senseless comparisons to English-speaking novels immediately sprout or are summoned: Animal Farm and Charlotte's Web. Really? Why the need to say something as senseless?! Those novels have nothing in common with this book except for the fact that they have animal characters in a farm. I have never read John Livingston Seagull, which is another book frequently mentioned, so I cannot comment on that. Personally, the only influences that came to mind when reading it were European, Aesop's fables and the Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen, although to be fair, the script of the movie Babe, which is Australian, also came to mind. Yet, this book is quite different in mood and message from all of those.    

NOTES

~o~ The book was first published in Korean in the year 2000, and it is a modern classic there. The novel was first published in English in 2010, this edition being of 2014, way behind the date when it was translated into other major languages.

~o~The story was brought to the big screen in 2011 in a Korean animated film titled in English Leafie, a Hen into the Wild and also Daisy a Hen into the Wild, and turned into the theatre stage in 2015. The book was also adapted to a comic book.

KINDLE RENDERING
Although you can easily individuate and zoom in the illustrations, the images are not very big, they don't fit the full page in my tablet. When you double-tap and individuate the image this is still a bit small, even if you zoom it by pinch it in, and it doesn't look neat enough. This could be easily solved in the Kindle edition, so the image can be zoomed without losing quality and zoomed in more.

A WARNING
This book is not for small children and needs of parental supervision as deals with themes that aren't easily understandable to children. I would not give it or read it to a small child, unless s/he is older than 6y.o.a.