Customer Reviews

Paul Goes Fishing

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

 

 

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!

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.