{"id":32324,"date":"2025-03-01T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=32324"},"modified":"2025-02-28T18:19:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T18:19:51","slug":"veils-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/03\/01\/veils-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Veils"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Pat McGreal<\/strong>, Stephen John Phillips<\/strong>, Jos\u00e9 Villarrubia<\/strong> & Rebecca Guay<\/strong> (Vertigo)
\nISBN: 978-1-56389-355-1 (HB): 978-1-56389-561-6 (TPB)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced in less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> included for dramatic effect. <\/em><\/p>\n

Although at first glance more exercise than exposition, this undemanding and inarguably prurient tale of the Seductive East is also a very readable exercise in genre fiction. Victorian gentlewoman Vivian Pearse-Packard<\/em> is late in marrying, and her eventual \u201cbetter half\u201d is a ne\u2019er-do-well wastrel. Now her father-in-law has brought them with him as he resumes his post as British Consul to a Far Eastern Sultanate.<\/p>\n

The new and exotic land is shocking to Vivian, and husband Harry<\/em> remains a possessive and loveless beast, but her life changes when a visit to the Sultan\u2019s seraglio leads to a friendship with one of the ruler\u2019s odalisques. Vivian\u2019s need for companionship initially draws her into the luxuriously seductive world but soon she becomes subtly aware of a hidden agenda among some of the women. Specifically, she is told the ancient tale of Rosalind<\/em>, a white woman stolen from her father and given to a Sultan, only to rise to the second most powerful position in the land.<\/p>\n

How the fable impacts on the increasingly desperate and repressed Englishwoman, and the choices she is subsequently compelled to make in her own life, provide a predictable but enjoyable spin on a most clich\u00e9d plot. Moreover, the combination of Phillips stagy yet compelling photography, augmented by Villarrubia\u2019s digital enhancement, imbues the tale with a static theatricality verging on abstraction in places. Rebecca Guay provides classic pen-&-watercolour art for those sections involving Rosalind\u2019s story, imparting the strangest inversion as her contribution is warm, sensitive, deeply alive and approachable, in contrast to the cold, distant and passionless fumetti walling it all in.<\/p>\n

All that aside, this is a worthy effort to escape to traditional boundaries of our medium and serves well as a bridge to the wider public.
\n\u00a9 2001 Pat McGreal, Stephen John Phillips & Rebecca Guay. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pat McGreal, Stephen John Phillips, Jos\u00e9 Villarrubia & Rebecca Guay (Vertigo) ISBN: 978-1-56389-355-1 (HB): 978-1-56389-561-6 (TPB) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect. Although at first glance more exercise than exposition, this undemanding and inarguably prurient tale of the Seductive East is … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Veils”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[239,299,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-feminism-sexual-politics","category-mature-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8pm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32327,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32324\/revisions\/32327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}