Today’s #unwrapALU recommendations get real deep with the historical and cultural struggles in Newfoundland and Labrador in Craig Francis Power’s The.Hope. (Pedlar Press) to constructed self-identity and the thin line between art and life in Tom Smart’s Palookaville:Â Seth and the Art of Graphic Autobiography (Porcupine’s Quill).Â
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ALU Editor
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Everyone has one – that tricky booklover on your list for whom you’re stymied on what to buy. Fret no longer: we’ve rounded up twenty books for hyper-specific people. Check our recommendations, and buy on. BONUS: get a set of our holiday gift cards FREE when you buy any of our featured books.
A young, well educated but generally despondent art curator, Joe, agrees to take a car trip with his old friend, Catherine, a writer, who’s been invited to appear at various literary venues across Newfoundland. A darkly comic look at Newfoundland art culture, part Kerouac, part Iggy Pop, part Right Away Monday, part Sweetland.***
No longer is the comic book or graphic novel the sole domain of adolescent boys—and rightly so. Today’s graphic novels demonstrate an astonishing level of artistic talent as well as keen narrative storytelling on par with many of today’s most compelling wordsmiths.Canadian cartoonist Seth, also known as Gregory Gallant, is one of the country’s greatest examples of the artistic and literary merits of the genre. He is an artist, author, and cultural commentator, as well as one of the foremost graphic novelists working today. His bold, confident draughtsmanship depicts life in a bygone era, replete with the fashions, manners and mores of mid-twentieth-century life. His acclaimed graphic novel series, Palookaville, constructs a bleak, almost Dickensian reality in which the characters struggle with the vagaries of everyday life and face existential questions about the time, fate and identity.From the first issues of Palookaville there are hints that the characters depicted in the narrative share startling similarities to Seth’s own life and personality. Readers are led to wonder what, if anything, might be considered autobiographical.Palookaville: Seth and the Art of Graphic Autobiography is Tom Smart’s attempt to unravel this mystery, examining the microscopic separation between art and life, between graphic fiction and autobiography. He offers up tantalizing evidence of Seth’s construction of identity and reveals the way in which art acts as a tool for the artist to make sense of modern life, the passage of time, and perhaps even humanity.***In just two days #unwrapALU will be all wrapped up, but we’re not done just yet. We still have four more recommendations coming your way, and we WILL find you that perfect book to gift. And remember we’ll send you a free set of holiday gift cards to go with your perfect present when you purchase any of our #unwrapALU picks.
