By Tillie Walden (Avery Hill)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-26-4 (TPB)
Tillie Walden is still a relative newcomer – albeit a prolific one – who has garnered heaps of acclaim and awards. Whether through her fiction or autobiographical works (frequently both at once), she always engenders a feeling of absolute wonder, combined with a fresh incisive view and measured, compelling delivery in terms of both story and character. Her artwork is a sheer delight.
Before globally turning heads with such unforgettable tales as I Love This Part, On A Sunbeam, A City Inside, Spinning, and Are You Listening? the remarkably adept neophyte auteur began her rise with this Ignatz Award-winning debut graphic novel. Compelling and poignant, this is a family drama fantasy, chillingly reminiscent of Nordic literary classicists such as Henrik Ibsen, Astrid Lindgren or Tove Jansson, thematically toned like Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia novels whilst visually recalling Dave Sim’s Cerebus books High Society and Church & State.
Trust me, one day soon you’ll be seeing this yarn as a stage play and movie…
Even more impressive is the fact that The End of Summer was crafted in 2015 as a side-project whilst Walden was finishing her First-Year major assignment at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. For more information you can read James Sturm’s Introduction in this paperback collection, which also includes the story’s prequel ‘Lars and Nemo’.
Like everything Walden creates, this is a story I hesitate to describe because it’s a beguiling immersive experience that doesn’t need me spoiling it for you. Get it, read it, tell a friend…
What I will say is this: in distant place servants and staff rush to seal a colossal, cathedral-like palace. Winter is coming and the palatial bunker will be closed off for three years…
In that oppressive atmosphere, frail prince Lars and his twin sister Maja become increasingly aware of the tensions and quirks afflicting their large family.
Lars’ failing physicality has made him a quiet, introspective and fatalistic observer, whilst his dependence on Nemo – a gigantic housecat acting as companion and living wheelchair – mark him as a marginalised target for siblings Olle, Per, Nikolaus and Hedda. As time passes and the children seek ways to amuse themselves, increasingly unstable Per seems to find the oppressive isolation and vast scale of the palace as well as the disinterest and suppressed tensions of the adults incomprehensibly claustrophobic.
Before long, the dooms and disasters Lars is obsessed with start to manifest leading to tragedy and terror…
Beautifully illustrated in monochrome tones, with Brobdingnagian perspectives shaping every panel, this saga of an opulent yet cold House of Secrets, shielding a broken family from the elements but not themselves and each other, is a superb examination of humanity at its best and worst, and comes in this edition with Walden’s essay ‘TEOS: Making Of’and that aforementioned prequel tale. ‘Lars and Nemo’ details happier, sunnier earlier days when a fragile prince meets the giant kitten who will become his greatest companion…
A comic masterpiece no fan should miss.
© Tillie Walden 2016. All rights reserved.