The first thing I love about this book is that you cannot easily place it into a genre. The desire to compartmentalise everything and label it neatly can sometimes be tedious so unless, heaven forbid, a pandemic genre evolves this book will float in nebulous categories to tantalise and delight.
The ‘B’ refers to the grade of drawing pencil used by the artist to create this portrait gallery of sometimes whimsical illustrations. I defy anyone not to find a picture of someone or some creature who means something to them.The second thing I loved about this book was how often I found myself delighting and exulting at how many of my favourite people and fauna populated its pages. Although each drawing is considerately labelled, most of them seemed easily recognisable unless they depicted somebody hitherto unknown. I found myself wondering whether Mr Carey drew them from memory or did he copy them from pictures or photographs. A drawing a day! I wondered how he decided who or what he would draw. And then as I read the book I realised he was acting sometimes upon suggestions from other people which I thought was wonderful. So that makes it a very inclusive book.
The accompanying narrative reminded me of journal type writing. This writer, like most of us, struggled to make some sense of the peculiar state the world finds itself in. It’s honest writing and tugs at you as as you recognise in reading about the author’s attempts to navigate the unfamiliar protocols of lockdown, your own floundering and pondering amidst the confusion and frustration that pervaded year one of this pandemic. And there is a sense of not feeling quite so alone. In reading the book alongside the drawings you are privy to someone else’s personal headspace which feels like a precious privilege - that’s the third thing I loved about this book. It also heightened awareness of how difficult it is when you’re far from your homeland.
The fourth thing I loved about the book was the presentation. My copy is a hardback but is a smaller size to many. The size somehow made the book so comfortable to hold, small but all the larger in intent. Can I call a book cuddly? Yes I can if I want to. This book is cuddly. It fits in your hand and it fits in your heart.
The fifth and final thing I love about this book is that it embodies and encompasses so much about the world, not just the present of the pandemic, but about things past, things national and international. And it looks at a way of marking a passage of time. Maybe it’s a time we’d all like to forget but this book reminds us that so many people dealt with it with integrity and dignity and ………..imagination.
review copy provided by the publisher
No comments:
Post a Comment