Renee French
The Ticking (2005)
Author: Renee French
Genre: Graphic Novel (Literary)
Plot Summary:
A simple and strange story about accepting one's self, Renee French's The Ticking uses shaded drawings and sparse text to tell the life of Eddie Steelhead. After his mother dies during childbirth and Eddie is discovered to have a facial deformity, his father moves them to a remote island. Eddie's two eyes are far apart, like a bird's, on either side of his head. Developing a great talent and love of drawing, of looking at and analyzing the world through those large eyes, Eddie uses pictures to impress his father. He draws a picture of his father, Calvin, and the strange scars on the sides of his head; it is obvious that Eddie resembles how his father once looked himself. One day, Calvin takes Eddie to the same plastic surgeon who had "fixed" his eyes. Eddie refuses to have the operation. After they return home, Calvin finds him a "little sister": Patrice, the dress-wearing chimpanzee. Calvin spends more and more time with Patrice, framing her scribbles, allowing her to eat worms when they fish, and reading to her. Eddie eventually runs away, back to the city where he was born. He works as an illustrator for a magazine and encounters others who look like him. SPOILER: Some of his old things start appearing in his apartment and one day he discovers Patrice next door with Calvin's dead body. Eddie an Patrice live together happily in the city.
Geographical Setting: Non-descript city and coastal island
Time Period: Contemporary (2005)
Appeal Characteristics:
The simple, pencil shaded pictures which tell the odd story lend themselves to an eery tone. French's character of Eddie is adorable though deformed. The reader see's his world through his drawings. The father, Calvin, is loving to his son, yet conflicted about his appearance. The emotional exploration of this father/son relationship will appeal to mature readers. The non-descript setting and the point-of-view of Eddie as a child lends to a feeling of powerlessness, questions, and darkness that can only be described as "Kafkaesque." The themes of deformity, artists, father and child relationships, and estranged families will appeal to graphic novel fans as well as those new to the genre. While the story is a quick read, the pacing is even and steady. The dark yet child-like tone and interesting characters are sure to be the major appeals for readers.
Read-alikes: Fans of Renee French's artistic style and sparse narration will also her earlier graphic novel The Soap Lady. For more gentle pacing and reflectiveness with a boy run-away protagonist, suggest Anders Nilsen’s graphic novel Dogs and Water. Eddie Campbell’s The Fate of the Artist is another graphic novel offering the reflexive theme of artists drawing/writing about artists. Sharing the tone and mood of French's The Ticking are the short stories of Franz Kafka. Suggest Peter Kuper's graphic novel adaptation of Kafka's classic The Metamorphosis for its similar themes of family relationships, estranged emotions, helplessness, and physical “wrongness.” Finally, Craig Clevenger’s The Contortionist's Handbook: A Novel is a likely crossover into popular fiction for fans of French. Clevenger's story combines the themes of disfigurement, fathers and sons, and self-acceptance.
Red Flags: Grusome drawings, nudity, death
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