The Arrival
by Shaun Tan
|
List Price: Our Price: $12.16 You Save: $7.83 (39%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.98 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Arrival
Book Review: Review of The Arrival
Summary: 5 Stars
If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be branching out into graphic novels this year I would have laughed. I was first surprised by them when I began to read a Korean Manhwa named Goong. Then, just last week I fell in love with The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.
And then yesterday I picked up The Arrival by Shaun Tan and didn't put it down until I'd finished it.
Unlike Goong and Hugo Cabret, this book does not have words. Even the notes and signs are in a made-up language. The entire story is told in pictures - beautiful, sepia colored pictures. This is the story of a man leaving his family and his country behind (a country besot with terrors of its own) and finding a new place for them to live. It's a story of fear and hope, loss and gain, adventure and home.
There is one moment - one set of pictures in this book that made me choke up and tears filled my eyes. When the man arrives in the strange country and opens his suitcase, an image appears that made me think of opening my suitcase for the first time after leaving home. That scent, the memories all seem to collide and you picture your family right there , for a moment it's captured and then it fades and just the items remain.
At first I thought this might be science-fiction because there were so many strange elements. Alien looking creatures (as evidenced by the cover), strange methods of transportations.. and then as I got into the book I realized that the story being told here is how our country must look to those arriving in it. The sights, sounds, smells - everything assaulting our senses is different, new, amazing, thrilling and terrifying. Shaun Tan captured that so well in this book and through a story of pictures managed to tell a more captivating immigration story then I've ever actually read through written word.
Book Review: astonishing arrival
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a brilliant masterwork of ....what exactly?
Well, it's a graphic novel with the overwhelming force of franz Masereel's pioneering work 'The City'
But it's also evocative of great literature, like Kafka's introductory chapters of 'Amerika' and 'The Castle', or his short story, The Animal in the Synagogue, and the dazzling architectural fantasy of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.
But it's also a dark fairy tale of uncertainty and catastrophe, survival and wonder, one that brings the ghastly sweep of the twentieth century into mythical focus. Yes, it's that good.
But it's also an amazing book for children on the verge of arriving into the strange world of adulthood.
But it's also a revelatory book for adults to come to terms with what they have wrought, look through the eyes of a visitor, like an innocent child, and arrive to a new conclusion about where they "fit".
But it's also a philosophic parable on the Lacanian sinthome, broken letters or words struggling to come into existence for the child/visitor/adult.
But it's also a silent film on paper, with a Buster Keaton hatted protagonist arriving into a new world.
But it's also a beautiful album of artwork, each page can stand independently as an image, or ensemble of images. So the narrative runs through each page, but the page does not depend on the next page to have meaning, beauty, and integrity.
But, because of these important aesthetic accomplishments, it's also more than the sum of its parts.
We have here a standard of art few have realized, a deeply empathetic and compassionate allegory of human being anyone on the planet can read and close their eyes when they close the book and know something beautiful has arrived.
Book Review: The Arrival
Summary: 5 Stars
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Once, as a boy, I was exploring the recesses of my grandmother's attic. Lifting the lid of an old trunk I discovered a thick envelope full of yellowed papers. The handwriting was ornate and fading; the language indecipherable - a mystery begging to be solved.
That's how I felt reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival. This engrossing book has the feel of old documents or a family album that has been lost for years. Pick it up and you hold in your hand the account of an immigrant who travels across cultures to a new land and a strange life. Yet this story is its own mystery to be solved because it is told entirely without words!
Pictures on each page reveal new clues to the story. Tan renders his drawings in pencil with a sepia tone and "water stains" that suggest the age and authenticity of a historical document once hidden between the rafters. Seen through the eyes of the protagonist who leaves his homeland, the culture of the new world is familiar and confounding at the same time. Buildings, street vendors, animals, foods, even kitchen utensils are foreign and confusing presenting complicated challenges for the main character. We find ourselves observing, analyzing, and interpreting this strange culture too.
And that's the fun of this book. We also must decipher and ascribe meaning to the images that create this story. Sometimes we even have to decide the order in which to "read" the sequential pictures! Tan's book gives a heart-felt voice to the immigrant experience and opens a window for anyone going abroad or welcoming new comers to their own land.
For more info visit www.thefirefly.org
Book Review: Show, Don't Tell
Summary: 5 Stars
The number one rule for writers everywhere is "Show, don't tell," and Shaun Tan's lovely, fragile, evocative wordless picture book is the ultimate expression of that rule. In an era when even in the enlightened United States of America, immigrants tend to be mistrusted, this book serves as a powerful reminder that the immigrant experience is fundamental to our heritage. But it is far more universal than that--it captures the dreads and hopes of ANYONE seeking to make a new life for themselves ANYWHERE. The ways in which, not only through the main character, but through visual flashbacks from his new friends, we are shown symbolically the kinds of oppression that drive people from their homelands, are particularly striking, as are the tender ordinary moments such as the man's cherished memories of his wife and child, who have yet to join him.
This is a picture book for older children and adults--and why shouldn't they have something this strange and wonderful? Why should small children be the only recipients of an art form whose full potential may arguably be realized for the first time in an extraordinary work like The Arrival?
I bought this book, not only because it was well reviewed, but because I own and love Tan's book, The Red Tree. But this book takes Tan's artistry to a whole new level. I was moved in so many ways, I can't even begin to name them. I'm usually inclined to offer some kind of congratulations to the author or illustrator of a particularly fine work, but in this case, all I can say to Shaun Tan is "Thank you."
Book Review: Incredible
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up The Arrival expecting to, at the most, have a look at the first few pages. About half an hour later I was still standing in the exact same spot, staring at the last page and wondering if I had time to start over again.
This is not a comic or a graphic novel. There's no text at all, just pictures, and it's a testament to Shaun Tan's skill that the book still manages to tell an engrossing and deeply affecting story about emmigration, oppression and the difficulties inherent in leaving your family behind for a new life. The nameless protagonist travels from his home country to a fantasy city that resembles a very whimsical interpretation of somewhere like New York. He faces the same problems that any new arrival in a country must contend with, including finding a job and dealing with the unfamiliar local culture. The people he meets are frequently immigrants themselves, and share with him their own stories.
The Arrival works on a number of levels, and fully appreciating it will require some thought on the part of the reader. It's more than worth the effort, however, particularly when a seemingly bizarre image abruptly comes together and makes sense. (My favourite was probably the giant cyclopean men with the furnaces on their backs, and I'm still mulling over the exact meaning of the dragons in the main character's homeland.)
I highly recommend this to anyone who likes great artwork and a great and deeply moving story. Go in with an open mind and you definitely won't be disappointed.