Three Shadows: haunting and dreamlike graphic novel of love, bravery and sacrifice

Today, I found a review copy of Cyril Pedrosa's Three Shadows in my PO Box, sent by First Second Books. I took a quick glance at the first page on my way out of the Mailboxes, Etc, and found myself still reading ten minutes later, having walked several blocks to the bus-stop. I just finished the book over lunch, and while I'm entirely sure that I enjoyed it, was moved by it even, I'm not sure that I understood it.

This is the story of Louis and Lise and their little son Joachim, peasants in a kind of Franco-Iberian no-place, somewhere in the Quixotic era of Cervantes, give or take a century. They live in a cottage in the woods and they live a sweet life that is marvellously evoked in just a few spare panels, drawn in a style that's halfway between Sergio Argones and Picasso's Don Quixote, emotive lines that are unabashedly broad and sentimental.

When three mysterious horsemen appear on the hill over the cottage, waking Joachim, Lise and Louis and scaring them into a nebulous, nauseous dread. The horsemen reappear day after day, terrifying and always just a little too far into the mist to be seen properly. After a visit to a seer in a nearby city suggests that the horsemen have come to take Joachim away, Louis resolves to run with his son, to go as far away as he can.

Thus begins the adventures of Joachim and Louis, over land and sea, through brushes with the noble and the enslaved, the horrible and the magical. The story, already saturated with allegory and symbolism, became so deep at this point that I couldn't entirely understand it, even as I was compelled to turn each page, letting the magic wash over me with the logic of a dream.

This is clearly a story about love and sacrifice, nobility and fearlessness, but how and why, I can't say. Pedrosa is a marvellous illustrator (he previously worked as an animator on the Disney versions of Hercules and the Hunchback of Notre Dame) and a strange and compelling storyteller. Link

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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1967mustangman

Cory that was amazing. Thank you for recommending that read. I love good graphic novel recommendations. Keep them coming.
sponselli

Thanks, Cory. Good stuff for kids?
Cory Doctorow

I think would be good for kids — I think they’re better at loving stuff without having to understand it (viz Alice in Wonderland) than big people.
ZippySpincycle

It is wonderfully refreshing to see a reviewer come right out and say “I loved this even though I’m really not sure I understand it.” It reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite literature professors who, before getting into the allegorical overtones in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” started the class by saying the story scared the hell out of him every time he read it because he could imagine something awful like that happening to his family.
jacord

#2: Good question which I was wondering myself. My soon-to-be 5 year old daughter likes “daddy’s books”, i.e. the graphic novels and comics I read to her at night, especially Tintin, and the spectacular “Wizard of Oz” adaptation by David Chauvel and Enrique FernÃ¡ndez. More likely than not, I’ll pick up “Three Shadows” and see if it’s appropriate for now, or for later…
XkrisCD

Wow! This is quite a review. Entries like this one are the reason I check Boing Boing often, I’d hate to miss a hidden gem like this appears to be. Thanks Cory!