"The first thing to pop into mind when this subject came up was a fairly recent example. I am a big fan of Pixu by Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, Vasilis Lolos, and Becky Cloonan, and I was particularly taken aback when I first read the self-published issues by one of Becky’s sequences. In chapter two, Omar returns home and something feels weird. Claire is acting strange. She made him some soup, and when he sits down to eat it, he notices something gross–a fingernail–in the broth. Then there is another, and another, and one in his mouth. It’s such a simple thing but the way Becky shows it, first by letting us see some nails on his spoon, then one between his fingers, and then finally spitting it out–it’s so visceral, I feel a tickle at the back of my throat just thinking about it. Over a few panels, she effectively creates an unforgettable moment, one that extends beyond the page and causes an honest-to-goodness physical reaction. It creeped me out so much, I had to send Ms. Cloonan an e-mail to thank her for disturbing me. The whole of Pixu is fantastic, but that’s the moment that really nailed it for me–no pun intended!"
as one of their books for October, and so I provided them with a special thank you/intro piece, discussing the rarely disclosed secret origin of the book."It all seems so simple now, I can barely believe it. It was a Saturday night, I think in 2003, and I was bored and trying to think of a side project to write during breaks from my second novel, The Everlasting. I am a big fan of good romantic movies, particularly Hollywood classics with Cary Grant or the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy pairings, and I started to think about the modern equivalent. If it were possible to write a movie like The Apartment or Two for the Road now, how would I do it? I don’t know if I was conscious of the Two for the Road connection at that very moment, but Stanley Donen’s 1966 masterpiece would end up being a real inspiration for what I was about to cook up. In it, Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney play a married couple who are heading for the rocks, and by criss-crossing several narrative timelines at once, Donen lets us compare and contrast and see how they got from very young love to very old love by drawing ingenious parallels between the jumbled stages of their life together."
Especially if there is a grammar portion to this test.
(left to write: Nico, Tally, Jamie, Joëlle)
"I think this is one stepping stone towards bigger and better things for Miss Wang. Maybe she should collaborate with Jamie S. Rich (who wrote the forward here) one of these days. (A copy of this book was provided for review purposes by the publisher)"
"I read your review of 'Never Let Me Go' and...every film you don't like, I like. And every film you praise, I hate. Easy peasy..."
(left to right: Joëlle Jones, Nicolas Hitori de, Jamie S. Rich)
