From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Abouet and Oubrerie's sequel to their 2007 graphic novel
Aya is a charming comedy of manners about a group of young women—a sort of Jane Austen scenario transplanted to the Ivory Coast of the late '70s. Aya's friend Adjoua has a new baby, and everybody's pitching in to help take care of him, although he looks rather less like the purported father than like an irresponsible bounder by the name of Mamadou. Meanwhile, their starry-eyed friend, Bintou, is plunging into a new romance with a man whose urbane extravagance blinds her to his sneakiness. Mostly, though, this volume is about the cheerful, communitarian spirit of the place and time it sketches out—a moment of postcolonial African history when people didn't have a lot of resources (Adjoua is entering a beauty contest in the hopes of winning cooking oil for the fritters she sells), but had high hopes for the future. Oubrerie's scrappy, witty pen-and-ink artwork is a small delight: everybody's got exaggerated but subtly expressive body language and facial expressions, and the story's dashed-off but dead-on settings—with traffic blocked by wandering sheep and tin roofs near ambitious office buildings—make its tone of historical transition between tradition and modernization even more vivid.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up—Picking up where
Aya (Drawn & Quarterly, 2007) left off,
Yop City continues the adventures of Aya, her family, and friends in prewar Ivory Coast. Adjoua is trying to convince the Sissokos that their son is her baby's father, but the truth comes out in a comedic episode. Moussa Sissoko isn't off the hook though, as his father decides it's time for him to learn the family business. Meanwhile, Adjoua's friends are spending as much time caring for the baby as she is, although Bintou thinks she has met the man of her dreams. As usual, all the action revolves around the periphery of Aya's life, but this time the drama hits closer to home at the book's end. Readers who haven't read the first volume will have a tough time following the action, as it picks up threads introduced there with little explanation. As in
Aya, back matter includes more Ivorian detail such as recipes, childbirth customs, and a glossary. Oubrerie's illustrations are even more colorful than in the original and match well with the light, humorous tone of the text. An interview with the author is included. This continues to be a pleasant addition to both world literature and graphic-novel collections in its depiction of Africa as a more modern urbane place than much of the literature we see about the continent.—
Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
