Reviews
It's truly pathetic that, in a work where one of the primary themes is bearing ethical witness to tragedy, a woman's abduction and murder is almost exclusively used as vehicle to examine men's emotional constipation.
3 things: 1. If someone tells you it is a masterpiece, believe them and befriend them. It won't be the the ideal novel to be your first in the foray into this semi-visual, semi-wordy world, but that's what makes it so much incisive and extraordinary. Zadie Smith called it so. 2. If you're intrigued by how (the fuck) human beings are acting and reacting in the age of disinformation, paranoia, fake news and complicated social interactions, this will be a good pick. The speed and transience of human suffering in 2018 is not an unknown fact, and yet. 3. The panels in the book (which are these separate boxes you usually see in a comic) are minimalistic yet somehow visually verbose. It is, at once, both a heavy story and a fleeting one. It is, after all, an epitome of the paradox of our times PS: the after-taste is unsettling .
One of the main characters, Teddy, is near-catatonic for half the book. The other dialogue follows his lead, in a way, a mumblecore, time-filling, phatic bathos way. The victims aren’t articulate. The interesting bit is that the twisted Alex Jones mouthpiece is eloquent, stirring, and human sounding. Almost all of the panels look the same: indoors, with matte walls, small oblong speech bubble up top, single blank potato character in the centre, trying to communicate. Their faces have two moods, like emoticons of old. The poverty is intentional, to evoke monotony to the point of horror. It helps to know it’s a dystopian work, by which I mean exaggerated. Not that murders don’t happen, not that many office buildings aren’t inexplicably sterile and unfit for sentient life, not that life grinds no one into catatonia, not that you don’t check your email 50 times too often, not that the bottoms of the internet haven’t caused or anyway precipitated sad mayhem already. But the world has fewer horrors now, even with Q and whatever next. if you ignore and select hard enough you can make a lot of things seem hellish, be hellish. Avoid if sad or worse.
When I first glanced at the panels, the artwork reminded me of Chris Ware, but less exacting, more loose, more minimal - simple lines for mouths and dots for eyes, no creases, no wincing. The characters in this graphic novel are lonely like Rusty Brown, but it's now a different time where conspiracy theories and fake news and massacres and distrust take over. Loneliness isn't just lonely and pathetic, it's become creepy and dangerous. Sabrina is a suspenseful read because it seems in this world anyone could be holding a knife at the other side of the door. 4.5 stars.
Sabrina is the story of a senseless killing that captures the paranoid zeitgeist, and follows the people who were connected to the late Sabrina when the horde of conspiracy-heads become obsessed with proving it was a false flag operation. Parallels are drawn to 9-11 and the Sandy Hooks massacre, and reading it I realized how little I've read about this particular dark underbelly of the net. Drnaso is honest about not having a solution, and his minimalist art and naturalistic writing conveys more of the subtle horror of having your grief interrupted by outside paranoiacs, than commenting on it outright. The storytelling is a little too start-and-stop for my liking. Drnaso conveys on page after page the banality of loneliness and daily, meaningless routine, but after 200+ pages it feels numbing, and I think a lot of it would be just as, if not more, engaging with tighter editing.
I'll be honest, I didn't hate the book, I just didn't understand why anyone would love it. It fell flat for me. I get its trying to make a statement but maybe it just didn't resonate enough with me. I was more curious and hopeful of concrete answers about what happened, but instead it focused more on conspiracy people who can't let go. I probably just wasn't the right target audience for this book.
Readable, but anxiety inducing
Não me surpreende que “Sabrina” tenha sido nomeado para o Man Booker de 2018 uma vez que o seu tom se aproxima de uma corrente artística muito prezada pelas elites das artes, a mesma que nos anos 1990 colocou o cinema independente americano — Jim Jarmusch, Todd Solondz ou Hal Hartley — no topo das preferências de culto, que tende a reger-se pela mestria do minimalismo. Contudo parece-me existir aqui uma diferença face ao movimento indie americano, é que esse movia-se por uma particularidade nuclear, o enredo niilista. Ora “Sabrina” é o seu contrário, sim a narrativa é minimal, ajudado em muito pela forma gráfica desprovida de expressividade, sem respostas a oferecer, mas o foco do enredo é bombástico, tocando num assunto do foro profundamente político. Não temos apenas raptos e assassínios, temos teorias da conspiração, fake news, discurso de ódio, militares, governos, famílias disfuncionais, etc. etc. Dito isto, o tema considero-o extremamente relevante, porque altamente atual. Contudo o modo como foi trabalhado, a narrativa produzida, considero-a fraca, para não dizer de mau-gosto. A indiferença é um traço interessante do ponto de vista minimal, mas usado em assuntos que requerem da sociedade uma reação totalmente contrária, de alerta e prontidão, parece-me um tiro completamente ao lado. Obviamente que a arte não tem de ser nenhum manual escolar de literacia dos média, contudo era suposto que a arte funcionasse como alerta, e não que contribuísse para o adormecimento da sociedade face a temas desta relevância. No final de “Sabrina” é inevitável sentir a impotência da sociedade para fazer face aos problemas representados, parecendo advogar-se a mera anuência do mundo apenas porque assim parece ter de ser. O problema é que não estamos a falar de questões existenciais individuais, estamos a falar do foro social, das regras que regulam a convivência em sociedade. Deste modo, parece-me que o autor, e quem o segue, se esqueceu que o processo de civilização é por natureza anti-niilista, sem o que simplesmente não existiria. Por isso não basta mestria técnica, que é visível no controlo e restrição irrepreensíveis operados pelo autor sobre um tema por natureza tão gritante, mas é preciso um pouco mais para criar uma obra de excelência. Publicado no Blog VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
Eigentlich bin ich kein Fan von Graphic Novels. Die meisten überfordern mich, weil in einem Bild oftmals so viele Informationen stecken und meine Augen keinen Ruhepunkt finden. Ich besitze zwar ein paar wenige Bücher dieser Art, aber die beinhalten wenig oder gar keinen Text. So war ich ein wenig skeptisch, als ich „Sabrina“ zur Hand nahm. Doch meine Bedenken waren unbegründet. Die Zeichnungen sind relativ einfach gehalten, die Sprechblasen eher klein und überschaubar. Dadurch gibt es zwar viele Einzelbilder auf einer Seite, dennoch hat mich das nicht von der Geschichte abgelenkt. Ich fand es vielmehr faszinierend, wie schnell ich in das Geschehen hineingezogen wurde. „Sabrina“ ist er Beweis, dass eine gute Story auch gezeichnet funktionieren kann, dass es mehr vom Inhalt als von der Erzählform abhängt, ob ich als Leser Interesse daran entwickeln kann. Die Handlung selbst ist düster. Es geht um ein Gewaltverbrechen, das in den Medien breitgetreten wird, um Verschwörungstheoretiker, die es ausschlachten, um Misskommunikation, Fake-News, Isolation. Natürlich ist das ganze ein wenig „amerikalastig“, dennoch trifft es den Kern unserer heutigen Informationsgesellschaft, ist bedrückend und regt zum Nachdenken an. Ein wenig gestört hat mich der überraschende Zeitsprung gegen Ende des Buches. Es ist klar, dass er asudrücken soll, dass das Leben weitergeht und irgendwann in den meisten Fällen wieder Normalität eintritt, dennoch kam er für mich etwas zu abrupt. „Sabrina“ ist eine Graphic Novel, die sich auch für Anfänger in diesem Genre hervorragend eignet. Sie steht meiner Meinung nach völlig zu Recht auf der Longlist des Man Booker und ich hoffe, sie schafft es in die engere Auswahl.
Heavy subject matter that captures the current moment in the U.S. So heavy I had to take a couple breaks reading it. I’m not sure I can say I “enjoyed” the book but it was extremely well crafted and thought out; as well as thought provoking.
Somehow was completely different subject matter than I expected it to be, though I don't want to spoil it and say how in any way. Gripping read for sure, read it almost in one sitting. Powerful.
I DIDN'T GET IT. Like for real, what the hell was this. I haven't been this disappointed in a book in so long. I was so surprised when I started reading, all I could think was: " wow this is so much darker and scarier than I thought it would be, I wonder how it will end". Well, it didn't. It was a total waste of time. It had a lot to read in some parts but also images without any dialogue which made it all very confusing and a bit boring, to be honest. It also took me quite some time to finish it and I wished I had realized earlier that the story would never get an explanation. Every little thing that happens is more of the same and it leads to nowhere. Seriously, if you think that I missed something tell me. But overall I felt this was all quite ridiculous.
