North Country

Publishers Weekly

The graphic novel is an excellent medium for the growing-up story, but works best when it focuses on plot rather than circumstance, on movement rather than Wordworthian spots of time. This book, full of eerie images from an impoverished and abusive '70s childhood, resembles a tone poem. It lingers in reminiscence and summary-fine for the psychoanalyst's couch and male teens quietly wallowing in self-pity, but it doesn't make a story that transcends its adolescent origins. White is a fine artist with moments of real meaning (for instance, a man in one panel, morphing to a teenager in a man's clothing, morphing into a little boy, all three with the same luggage), but he fails to put these images together into a narrative. He might produce a fine second or third book, but the audience for these jewel-like pastels and cold white images of the winter wastes of New England feels limited to men who remember, too vividly, their bad Vietnam-era childhoods. It doesn't help that much of the narrative is grim and wordy, reading like a rough therapy session. Some of the panels, especially those dealing with a suicide, are so evocative as to be transcendent, but this is largely a book of unrealized promise. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

VOYA

In this autobiographical retrospective, the author returns home as an adult to his estranged parents. The narrative alternates between the journey and White's memories of his troubled childhood. The flashbacks are loosely related events, often prompted by a visual cue-a child, an untied shoe, an orange backpack, and reveal a dysfunctional family coping the best they can. White admits straight off that his parents were too young for the demands of family life. Poverty, alcoholism, and his father's explosive temper were the results. He recalls events like a friend's disastrous birthday party, the day he got his own Superman cape and realized he could not fly, and as a teenager, his father's confession of infidelity which forever changed the balance of power in the family. When he reaches home, there is no clear closure, but his sister and her newborn offer hope for the family and the future. The realistic art and the tight grid of three-by-three panels work well with the nature of the story. White's visual metaphors are sparingly used and effective, whether it is his adult self shifting back to a child or his father literally crumbling before his eyes. There is little to unite the scenes, however, and the narrative never resolves into a coherent whole. Although this reviewer would not suggest it for a core graphic novel collection, the contemplative tone and autobiographical nature will appeal to some older teens. It might do well in collections where Craig Thompson's Blankets (Top Shelf Productions, 2003/VOYA April 2004) is popular. VOYA CODES: 3Q 3P S A/YA G (Readable without serious defects; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed bookrecommended for Young Adults; Graphic Novel Format). 2005, NBM, 96p., Trade pb. Ages 15 to Adult.
—Elisabeth Hegerat

Kirkus Reviews

White combines memoir with a graphic-novel format in the story of a painful childhood. North Country neighbors the Great Lakes, alongside the St. Lawrence River. White grew up there, in an abusive household where his parents, young and largely overwhelmed with the responsibilities of building a family with limited finances, took their frustrations out on their children. This tension-fraught work is relayed from the points of view of White as a child and as an adult. As the story opens, White is an adult returning to visit his parents and see his sister's newborn baby. Anxious, afraid to fly, he immediately begins to recall bad childhood memories: the time he ran away from home, the time his father stood over him threateningly with a ruler when he was learning to tie his shoes, the time his father threw a knife at his mother during an argument, the time his mother hit him with the vacuum hose for spilling dirt on the carpet. After a turbulent airplane ride, White returns home, where he greets his parents (albeit reluctantly) and welcomes his sister's baby. The awkward reunion yields White's best illustrations. The final panel, depicting a young White running toward a setting sun, is as cheerful as this story gets. A dark, foreboding narrative whose style pays tribute to Robert McCloskey and 1950s Superman comics.