∎ [PDF] Sabrina Nick Drnaso 9781770463165 Books

Sabrina Nick Drnaso 9781770463165 Books

Download As PDF : Sabrina Nick Drnaso 9781770463165 Books

Sabrina Nick Drnaso 9781770463165 Books

No documentary, mockumentary, youtube clip, news special, social media post, film, book, podcast, or article has ever captured the complexity of media and humanity in 21st century America quite so lucidly as this graphic novel (so far). Drnaso is giving us a mirror to stare at, which is frightening but also difficult to turn away from.


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Sabrina Nick Drnaso 9781770463165 Books Reviews

Sabrina is unnerving, distressing subtle, and humane. I couldn’t put it down. With a story that explores real human tragedy, the horrifying implications of extremist conspiracy theories, and the troubled lives of everyday people, this graphic novel is a compelling masterpiece.
On the positive side, I understand the praise for the cinematic approach to storytelling. The way the book shows the awkwardness of human interactions and the bleakness of the suburban landscape is very well done.

Opposite that, my disppointment. It's hard to express my take on this book without spoiling the story for other readers. I'll say that I found the arc of the story and especially the resolution of the mystery very unsatisfying.
Sabrina is, of course, the first picture book to be nominated for the Booker prize. This will prove a disservice to the medium; surely there were twenty or fifty more worthy works published, and this certainly didn't motivate me to seek out another one.

The art, I hope, is not representative. It's ugly, it adds little, all the characters look the same. Surely there's a more innovative way to represent alienation than a lonely Hardee's on the side of the road. If that's somehow the point, the point is trite. We get it.

The plot also doubtlessly caught the committee's eye. Chicagoland's five hundred seventy-eighth homicide of the year reunites two former pals, and they eat burgers and drink microbrews together, but alone, because that's the kind of place America is nowadays. I was shocked to find diners empty and video game lobbies full.

Looming large over the plot is Alex Jones, one of the USA's most respected public intellectuals. One hardly needs explain how Jones has drawn acclaim far and wide for his insights on national affairs. To this point, few have been willing to stand up to Jones's movement, but Drnaso and the Booker committee make a powerful case that society may not benefit if he remains unchecked. This brave, necessary act of punching up against people who listen to Infowars leads me to round up to two stars.
 This is the first graphic novel I've ever purchased. I've read a few over the years, at the library, but I've never bought one. I bought Sabrina because I read that it was the first graphic novel ever to make the long list of the Man Booker Prize (the short list will be announced Sept. 20).
 Here's a good description (and part plug) of the book, stolen from themanbookerprize.com

Where is Sabrina?
The answer is hidden on a videotape, a tape which is en route to several news outlets, and about to go viral.
Sabrina is the story of what happens when an intimate, ‘everyday’ tragedy collides with the appetites of the 24-hour news cycle; when somebody’s lived trauma becomes another person’s gossip; when it becomes fodder for social media, fake news, conspiracy theorists, maniacs, the bored.

 What's brilliant about Sabrina and probably other graphic novels is that it does things that can't be done on film or in prose. (If you're watching a movie and it shows a lot of text on a computer screen, you're not going to have good things to say about that movie.) Speaking of the text on computer screens, the one false note in Sabrina is that the author has conspiracy buff nut jobs (a redundancy) writing perfect English in their posts, with proper capitalization and punctuation. Not that I look at that sort of thing much, but from what I've seen of such writing (Trump's tweets, e.g.) I can tell you this they don't write that well.
 I guess the book is in high demand and that the publishers didn't anticipate that because it took weeks to get it delivered. It was expensive, too, and that's a qualm I had with it. I understand that printing an entire book in color cost more than just black text on paper, but Sabrina is not printed with rich inks on glossy paper, nor should it be—being slick in any way would detract from its message. Still, the $27 price point was high for a book that you're going to finish in under two hours. I can't recommend buying it at that price unless you're going to share it with others.
Drnaso works like a filmmaker at the top of his game, imbuing landscape and deep-focus space with longing, emptiness and dread. At times, Sabrina seems a modern reconfiguration of The Searchers — updating John Ford’s combination of American myth, purity and paranoia to the present moment. Negative reviewers here seem to be missing the point of Drnaso's "flat" style. It forces the reader to look, and look, and look -- is there something I'm missing in this panel? A detail or pattern I've overlooked? Is that person to be trusted or not? Is that a man, a woman, another category? The cumulative effect is to cultivate empathy -- but also paranoia and suspicion, which replicates elegantly both what we'd like to be and what we've become. For me, the impact was disturbing and also strangely redemptive.
No documentary, mockumentary, youtube clip, news special, social media post, film, book, podcast, or article has ever captured the complexity of media and humanity in 21st century America quite so lucidly as this graphic novel (so far). Drnaso is giving us a mirror to stare at, which is frightening but also difficult to turn away from.