Customer Reviews

Heartbreak Soup (Love & Rockets)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A surrealist, sometimes non-linear, story of generations of families in one small, Mexican town. I would say that it felt like I was reading something akin to Gabrieal Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in comic form. I loved it.

These are great illustrated stories. They have the feel of true literature. The drawing style is almost naive but sophisticated in its graphic clarity and concise storytelling. I marvel at Mr. Hernandez' ability to convey emotion through a simple series of panel designs. Great memorable characters and heartfelt dialogue. As I read I got the impression that these are true stories, although a bit exaggerated. Originally released monthly, bi-monthly as 32-46 page comicbooks. These stories are true classics of the comicbook form, and now released as Graphic Novels. Fantastic Comics!

Moving back and forth in time, spanning approximately 20 years, this book represents an epic in storytelling. Set in the isolated town of Palomer it moves back and forth through time telling different stories of the residents in their youth and their adulthood. Starting with a prologue about the town midwife and how she helped birth most of the children and watched them grow up. It sets up the first story in which you think that Soledad and Manuel are going to be the main characters of the entire book, but it becomes a self-contained narrative about their positions in the town and their unspoken love that ends tragically even as they circle each other. The next story skips years into the future and you see the kids who are hanging out and being punks as grown men trying to figure out their lives and deal with their wives as well as the children that keep showing up.

What makes this book so amazing is the way it can seamlessly move from one character to the other, showing everyone from a multitude of perspectives filling in blanks left from previous stories and yet keeping some mysteries intact. The only criticism I can make concerns the way certain characters don't seem to age - particularly Luba who looks like Sophia Lauren in her 20s throughout the book. Still that's a very minor quibbling and for a book that succeeds in being the graphic novel tribute to One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.) its not important in the overall enjoyment.