The Bloggomist: Table of Content
Book Review
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For many of those in/from the States, this week will likely be marked by feasting, football, fiasco (not necessarily in that order, of course). Allow me to add a little something to your fete…? As I’m loath to be that guest who brings plastic cutlery and a half-thawed peach cobbler to this holiday Table, I offer here my Thanksgiving contribution: The Arrival (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007) by Shaun Tan.

If you haven’t surmised from the cover, this is not a book about Thanksgiving. It isn’t about food (though, as you can see from the first image and another to follow, it does make an appearance), or even a special event. The Arrival, in simplest terms, is about family, about home; about leaving family and home for someplace far away; about making a new home amidst myriad unknowns; about being at home without forgetting what came before and what it was to be alone.

In this delicately hand-drawn, grey- and sepia-toned wonder, Shaun Tan depicts (in the primary sense of the word) an immigrant experience. Eloquent illustration rather than traditional text conveys the stories of people driven from homeland by the spectres of invasion, oppression, and war. In lieu of lengthy paragraphs that establish setting, Tan’s fantastical spreads of urban edifice and monument create landscapes both psychical and physical. Meticulously composed images take place of prose to communicate what obstacles language inevitably poses in an immigrant’s pursuit of life’s basics, like shelter, food, work.

What makes The Arrival so finally compelling is its evincing the ineffable. Fear, gratitude, loneliness, surprise, joy, longing, and wonder — Shaun Tan depicts each of these with a studied fineness that makes his characters supremely sympathetic.  That the book is also peopled with individuals of diverse physical and character traits, origins, and  circumstances speaks to certain universalities that allow readers, immigrant or otherwise, to recognize themselves in the story. Who or what the arrival is, ultimately, is not definitively told you in the book. But it seems quite likely that the answer to that question resides in each reader — it is the conclusion at which each reader arrives.

So to return to Thanksgiving and family. Why The Arrival is so appropriate to this week’s holiday is neatly summarized by this last image:

If it doesn’t make sense, you’ll simply have to read the book. Do that, and then you’ll get it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving. Love the kin you’re in.

Published on 24 November 2009 | |