Blood Song: A Silent Ballad [Paperback]

Eric Drooker (Author), Joe Sacco (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 015600884X | ISBN-13: 978-0156008846 | Publication Date: January 1, 2009 | Edition: 2nd

From American Book Award winner Eric Drooker, this is a story for the ages, beginning with the agrarian past, through the industrial present, and into the technological future.
A young woman bravely escapes a military assault on her island village, journeying across the ocean to arrive, unknowingly, in the Big City. There she meets and falls in love with a saxophone player, who makes heartfelt music. The police find and silence him, confiscating his saxophone and warning him not to make music again as it's strictly forbidden in the Big City. When the street musician continues to make music with his voice the police soon find and imprison him, making the future uncertain for the talented performer and the brave woman who loves him.
Blood Song transcends the boundaries of conventional novels--a wordless tale written in the ancient language of pictures.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Drooker's postindustrial silent ballad of man's place within a planetary life cycle is back in print with this lush new softcover edition. Also known for his New Yorker covers, Drooker's wordless comics and graphic novels follow the traditions of politically motivated woodcut-novelists including Lynd Ward and Frans Masereel. Drooker infuses those artists' emblematic approach with comics-specific narrative forms, fluid storytelling, and gracefully animated drawing. Less frenetic than his darkly urban Flood! this book moves at a stately pace matched to the grander rhythms and cycles of a living world. In the highly symbolic and sharply pointed narrative, a rural Southeast Asian woman's budding maturity dovetails with her awareness of a larger, technological world—forcibly manifested by a platoon of familiar-looking, heavily armed GIs. The woman escapes in an epic journey that takes her to a cosmopolitan city, where she discovers both the creative and oppressive possibilities of civilized modernity. This contemporary fable is expressed entirely through the intense artwork, combining dark, inky scratchboard with sensitive and judicious watercolor, crisply and brightly reproduced. The high production values of this affordable paperback edition are perfectly calibrated to communicate Drooker's universal message with maximum clarity. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This remarkable book induces in readers the powerful emotional truth of a folktale or myth. Told entirely through art, the narrative is simple. Driven from their rural home by war in Southeast Asia, a young woman and her dog survive a sea crossing and find themselves in an industrial city in the West where they encounter love and another sort of war. Varying his images from spreads to multi-panel sequences, Drooker is a master of pace and mood. His perspectives veer in a visionary fashion from galactic to intimate. He movingly portrays a striking range of emotional states from calm tranquillity to loving sex to panicked flight. His scratchboard-and-watercolor art is monochromatic and expressionistic, with visual echoes of traditions as varied as the lyrical watercolors of Southeast Asia and the muscular woodblocks of socialist realism. When color does make a rare appearance, it has a powerful narrative effect. Readers are likely to be drawn, like the protagonist, into the maelstrom, and to find themselves thinking deeply.
Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse Books; 2nd edition (January 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015600884X
• ISBN-13: 978-0156008846
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ERIC DROOKER is a painter and graphic novelist, born and raised on Manhattan Island.
He's the award-winning author of "Flood! A Novel in Pictures," "Blood Song: A Silent Ballad" and "Howl: A Graphic Novel."
He designed the animation for the recent film, "Howl," a movie based on the epic poem by Allen Ginsberg, who collaborated with Drooker on the book "Illuminated Poems."
His paintings appear on covers of The New Yorker, and hang in numerous collections. He regularly draws from the figure, and is working on a series of nude paintings for an upcoming book.

visit: www.Drooker.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, clear, simple, July 22, 2006

By 

Z Lasu (USA, Poland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Song: A Silent Ballad (Paperback)

I find "Blood song" amazing. I mean, amazing **********. A big story contained in a small book. A girl in a South Asian forest goes to fetch some water, and in the meantime her world is destroyed. She gets into a boat with her dog and starts rowing. Is the book a story of an immigrant from Vietnam? There are no explanations attached to the pictures. The story feels large, universal. It's the journey of a small individual in the world governed by powers: armies, fire, the ocean, racial domination. I thought crosses my mind; this could be a great animation movie, something in the style of 'Princess Mononoke', but, no, this book is a great artform as it is, a story compressed in five minutes flipping through a silent, breathtaking book. Amazing, clear, simple graphics, and not even a single word. I'm stunned.

I've looked up the reviews on Amazon and some of them accuse the book of preaching. Hmm, even preaching can be made into art, can't it?

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very moving graphic novel, April 18, 2004

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood Song: A Silent Ballad (Paperback)

This book is a graphic novel without words, where artist Eric Drooker uses images to tell the story of a young Southeast Asian girl, who finds trouble and despair, and ultimately life and hope. The images are stark and moving, relying on black and white - with small blasts of color for life and hope. Overall, the story is very hyper-orthodox leftist with happy people of color brutalized by dehumanized and dehumanizing white people. But, nonetheless, I found this to be a very moving graphic novel.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Without a Single Word . . ., February 1, 2003

By 

Shanshad "shanachie_shadowfax" (Discworld) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Blood Song: A Silent Ballad (Paperback)

This is a story that begins far away, with a girl and her dog and the powerful journey of transformation and meaning they endure. It is a story without words, consisting of incredible images crafted with stark beauty and stunning ability. The main character of the story, a young girl on the verge of womanhood lives in a peaceful, pastoral setting in some remote village-but coming home from the river one day, she discovers that her peaceable world has been drastically changed, and this sends her on a vivid journey that only Mr. Drooker's art can do justice to.

This is my first encounter with Eric Drooker's evocative imagery. I'm determined it will not be my last. This book epitomizes the legitimacy of the graphic novel as a valid and valuable medium of expression. Powerful pictures crafted with a limited palette of colors make this story all the more striking and beautiful. The feeling of being swept up in a powerful story, of emotion and depth is immediate and takes the reader from the first page to the last. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that this book can be read by anyone who can see the art on the page. No poor reading skills will block it's story, no language barrier stands in the way.

Native New Yorker, Eric Drooker is certainly a compelling artist and BLOOD SONG showcases his work in fine fashion. The art will likely appeal to a varied audience of viewers. The views presented in the story and the author's attitudes towards governmental authority might not appeal as widely. Mr. Drooker doesn't "mince words" with his story, nor does he pull his punches. But the larger message in Drooker's work is one of universal connection, hope and humanity in a continuing cycle.

Even if you've never encountered a graphic novel before, pick this one up, page through it. If that simple act doesn't keep you turning pages I'll be very surprised.

Happy Reading! ^_^ --shanshad