Jeff Lemire
Tales from the Farm: Essex County, Volume 1 (2007)
Author: Jeff Lemire
Genre: Graphic Novel (Literary)
Plot Summary:
Ten-year-old Lester lives on a farm in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. He never met his father, and his mother recently died of cancer, leaving him in his uncle Kenny's care. Sensitive, solitary Lester does not get along well with the gruff (but well meaning) Uncle Kenny and spends a lot of time wearing superhero clothing, reading comic books, and playing imagination games. Lester runs in to Jimmy Lebeuf, the local gas station owner, down by the creek and strikes up a friendship with him. Jimmy is a former NHL hockey player who is rumored to have become "kinda slow" after a tragic hockey accident, and Uncle Kenny warns Lester not to play with him. But Lester and Jimmy find they have a lot in common, and enjoy playing pond hockey and imagining space invaders together.SPOILER: At the very end of the novel, the reader is led to believe that Jimmy may in fact be Lester's long-lost father, when on his (imaginary?) deathbed Jimmy recites a phrase that Lester's dad supposedly favored.
Geographical Setting: Rural town in Southwestern Ontario, Canada
Time Period: Contemporary with 2007 publication
Series: Essex County trilogy, book 3
Appeal Characteristics:
Jeff Lemire's Tales from the Farm won the YALSA Alex award in 2007. The award is given to adult books that are appropriate for young adults ages 12 to 18. Much of the book's appeal lies in its transcendent nature. It is able to transcend place, time, race, gender, and other dimensions to appeal to a wide variety of readers, including young and old. The book is set in a small farm town in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, but it could be any rural community. The isolated setting acts as a mirror for the solitary main character, Lester. The characterization of Lemire's novel is an important feature of its appeal. The main character and secondary characters are well drawn (in both the literary and artistic sense) and by way of elegantly illustrated comic frames, the reader feels that he or she is looking in on the most intimate moments of their lives--moments in which no other characters can see their expressions, hear their sighs, share their loneliness. Lemire's characters' emotions leap off the page, by way of both the illustrations and text, and are quite moving in their simplicity. In their dealings with sickness, death, strained relationships, and forbidden friendship, Lemire's characters don't have to try too hard to earn their readers' sympathy. This leads in to the writing/illustration style Lemire employs, which is quite literary, elegant, and restrained. Instead of using detailed pictures and words to describe the story, he uses impressionistic pen-and-ink depictions of characters whose facial expressions and body language convey more about their mental states and social relationships than the book's restrained dialogue does. The graphic novel format, with its visually intriguing artwork, gives Tales from the Farm a fast pace. The frames are easy to digest and give the same effect as text, but in a tidier, more compact package. It's a quick read, and young and old readers will not lose interest in the book, though the story is not mysterious or compelling, nor is the subject matter very lively. The tone of the novel is lonely, dark, and tragic, and this is evident by way of the quiet, somber text, as well as the poignant, moving illustrations.
Read-alikes: Those who enjoyed Lemire's Tales from the Farm will appreciate Marjane Satrapi's YASLA Alex award winning books Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Satrapi's graphic novels are heartbreaking memoirs of her life growing up in Iran. Satrapi's black-and-white illustrations, like Lemire's, are powerful in their simplicity, and her carefully drawn characters win readers' hearts. Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda, by Stassen, is the story of a teenage Hutu living in Rwanda during the genocide. It's a coming of age story that traces Deogratias' experiences with war-time violence and mental breakdown. Stassen's award-winning graphic novel has a serious tone. Its haunting illustrations offer much of the same appeal as Lemire's work, which also deals with unpleasant, realistic themes. Ghost Stories: Essex County, Volume 2, is the second book in Jeff Lemire's Essex County trilogy. It follows the entire lives of Lou and Vince Lebeuf, two brothers living in Essex County, Ontario. Vince dies and leaves Lou to revisit the tragedies of his entire life, haunted by memories. Lemire employs his signature illustration style, which, with its simply descriptive style, lends a haunting and impressionistic quality to the graphic novel. It skilfully explores tragic themes with a dark tone that brings out emotion in its readers. The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, is the story of an immigrant who leaves his family to move to a new world. Tan's universal narrative is like Lemire's in that it transcends location, ethnicity, time, etc. The novel contains adult themes but a simple style that will appeal to young readers, as well. It takes the quiet writing style of Lemire's book to a new level in its utter wordlessness. Though the illustrations are much more realistic than Lemire's sketchy black-and-white comic style, it's similar to Lemire's in that the emotional qualities are brought out simply and powerfully by way of art instead of text. Bill Watterson's Complete Collection of Calvin and Hobbes is an award-winning set of three volumes that includes all the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons that ever appeared in syndication. It is a good place to begin to appreciate the intelligent writing style of Watterson's famous comic series. Although the tone of the Calvin and Hobbes collection is not as dark as in Tales from the Farm, many of the same mature themes apply, in particular, friendship, family life, and escapism.
Red Flags: Adult themes of mental and physical illness, death, strained relationships, and alien invasion. Some foul language.
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