Paul Goes Fishing [Paperback]

Michel Rabagliati (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2008

"Free of self-loathing . . . [Rabagliati's] black-and-whie panels eschew half-tones for a spirited line." --Voice Literary Supplement

 

This fourth installment in Michel Rabagliati's semiautobiographical series finds Paul settling comfortably into adult life, occasional twinges of anxiety aside. His graphic design business has taken off, his partner, Lucie, is pregnant, it's mid-July and time to leave behind the city to go fishing. Long lazy days stretch out while Paul's thoughts wander from the colorful characters at the fish-and-game camp to the
lurking depths of childhood, a Holden Caulfield-esque adolescence, and the encounters that have shaped his sense of family thus far. But the golden glow soon lifts off his vacation with the realization that the lake isn't as idyllic as it would seem, and neither is pregnancy.

 

Elegant composition and spare, condensed drawing crystallize emotion and atmosphere in this wistful and engaging account of
everyday hopes and hardships, told with a keen and playful sense of iconic detail. Even the mundane holds beauty and meaning in this compassionate story of expectation, disappointment, and wonder.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A native Quebecois artist, Rabagliati has chronicled a thinly veiled version of his artistic and interior life in his previous three books, and the present volume finds his stand-in, Paul, entering into adult responsibilities with his fiancé, Lucie, and thoughts of a child on the way. On a long summer break, Paul remembers his childhood vacations and his own upbringing and early love affair with Lucie. Meanwhile, Lucie has a very difficult time sustaining pregnancies. All of this is told in a matter-of-fact, somewhat flat manner. Rabagliati is an everyman chronicler in that way—telling the facts of a story with no artificial drama or hysterics. Unfortunately, this makes for a somewhat dull read. This slightly boring telling is redeemed by Rabagliati's wonderful skill with a pen. His cartooning is steeped in the clean-line style of Hergé and other Europeans, and he cleverly delineates characters and their environs in this simple, elegant and reductive style. It's a pleasure to look at, even with somewhat limited returns. Paul Goes Fishing is a fine graphic novel—not great, not bad, but firmly in the middle, with a sharp sense of craft and a warm heart guiding it. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Readers have followed Rabagliati’s alter ego Paul from his unhappy youth as a high-school dropout through his first stabs at adulthood. In the fourth book about him, he’s married and settled down with girlfriend Lucie and working as a graphic designer in Montreal. A fishing trip with his in-laws is largely uneventful. Paul gets to know them better, reminisces about his childhood and troubled adolescence, and finds that he doesn’t really care for fishing. Such unsensational developments are consistent with previous installments of Paul’s saga, all of which evoked the charm and quiet drama of small moments. After the vacation, Paul and Lucie’s efforts to get pregnant meet a series of setbacks that come as close to anguish as Rabagliati has so far brought his hero. The art is as unpretentious as the plots. Rabagliati, a graphic designer himself, understands the importance of visual simplicity and thoughtful panel composition to effective comics storytelling. It’s easy to underrate Rabagliati’s achievement, which is the celebration of the everyday so as to make of it modest yet compelling art. --Gordon Flagg

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly; 1st edition (March 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897299281
• ISBN-13: 978-1897299289
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,328,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Several rich slices of life, August 22, 2008

By 

William Timothy Lukeman - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paul Goes Fishing (Paperback)

Michel Rabagliati's semi-autobiographical novels about his alter-ego Paul just get better & better! In this most recent volume, Paul reminisces about his earlier years, when he first met & fell in love with Lucie, and began his career as a graphic artist. Meanwhile, in the present, he & Lucie are doing their best to become parents, but medical problems cast a tragic cloud over that possibility.

That's a good summation of this graphic novel, but it can't begin to convey the humor, warmth, and basic humanity to be found in its pages. Slice-of-life stories can easily become boring if not handled well, but that's never the case here. At the same time, Rabagliati never succumbs to melodrama in order to jazz things up. The sense of real life is always convincing & strong.

It's really a coming-of-age story -- not of a boy, but of a young man discovering film, art, food, culture, love, and the complex emotional shadings of adult life. Paul is inexperienced without being superficial, in that the potential for becoming a genuine grown-up is already there within him. He just needs exposure to some teachers & guides who'll introduce him to a much wider world.

I want to call special attention to Rabagliati's deceptively simple, cartoony style of drawing. He seems to use very few lines, always clean & sharp, but the backgrounds are always full of detail without ever being cluttered. His storytelling abilities are obvious, as he manages to weave smoothly between past & present, memory & immediacy, without his readers ever getting lost.

And Paul himself is just such a decent human being -- aware of & angered by needless cruelty & pettiness, always a good person to spend time with, someone you'd want as a friend.

There's an indefinable quality to this work, something that puts it a cut above many other very good graphic novels. In fact, the only thing wrong here is that there's usually a couple of years wait between each new volume!

Highly recommended!

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing., December 4, 2010

By 

FossilTooth (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paul Goes Fishing (Paperback)

I'm not a graphic novel fan, so far as I know. However, I picked this book up from a display stand at my local library and finished it in a sitting. It was one of the most human and engaging things I've read in a long time.

There's nothing flashy or overly dramatic about Rabagliati's work. "Paul Goes Fishing" is a story about the simplest and most important elements of our lives.

It's a very unassuming book, but phenomenal, and deeply moving.