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Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018
Oh, you poor, narrow-minded snobs who think that just because a book has pictures in it, it must be shallow! Newsflash: "The medium is the message" never meant that the carrier defines the content, but that every carrier has specific qualities that allow messages to be conveyed differently, and that the carrier has an impact on the way a message is sent and perceived - which brings us to what makes a successfull graphic novel. Nick Drnaso finds wonderful ways to let his language and his drawn images with their specific qualities work together in order to create one coherent work of art instead of just piling up words and pictures.

The story focuses on Calvin, a surveillance specialist in the air force. He wants to help out his childhood friend Teddy, who had a nervous breakdown because his girlfriend Sabrina mysteriously disappeared. When it becomes clear what happened to her, Calvin and Teddy become targets of the news media and conspiracy theorists...

An important theme in the book is loneliness: The dialogue often consists of polite, but empty phrases, many images show just one person in a lonely room, hall or street, the story hints at different dimensions of alienation, and the coloring is very bleak and within a limited range. In this context, Drnaso discusses how and to what ends acts of violence like abductions, murders or mass shootings are committed in the media age, how the news cycle spins and how victims and their families are victimized a second time as a consequence of sensationalist reporting and the way some viewers react to it. When the pressure mounts, Calvin and Teddy react very differently, and Teddy even becomes susceptible to conspiracy theories that re-enforce his feelings of pointlessness and desperation.

I liked the quiet minimalism Drnaso employs to tell his story, and which contrasts directly with the loud media outrage he depicts. He draws with very few lines, there is nothing that wouldn't be necessary to tell the story. The reader has to look very closely at the faces to see the nuance in the expressions - and it is the need for nuance, for close attention and an acute awareness that this author wants to highlight in his story.

It's easy to see the merit of this book, and I'm all for including different forms of storytelling in the Booker list as long as the quality justifies it - in this case, it does.