Page 45 Review by Stephen
These interior pages GLOW!
So artfully coloured, that you can feel, almost smell the time and place. Plus, if I've posted properly the final image in America will, tellingly, reflect the first in Cuba - which is where Edel grew up in the wake of the revolution.
For lovers of Satrapi's PERSEPOLIS and Bui's THE BEST WE COULD DO, this is every bit as personal and, at times, vicariously terrifying...
And it wouldn't be so affecting were Edel's friends and family - his Mum, Dad, Grandmother and Grandfather - not so vividly recalled, along with all their passions, deprivations and fears: fears of the least neighbourly spying then informing on them to the state, for Edel's Ma and Pa were particularly individualistic and unimpressed by the people's revolution pissing on the people, in particular the poor.
Stylistically, many sequences kick off with an urgent, worrying flashpoint. Rodriguez then immediately begins building the context that led up to this danger. It's one of the ways he keeps tension tight throughout the book.
Like Thi Bui's autobiography, the wider picture is the improbable escape of a family - against all calculable odds - from totalitarianism.
Only in Edel's case, he found himself falling foul of it again as a political artist / cartoinist in America under Trump: the same intimidation and full-on death threats thanks to the toxic language of political 'debate' normalised by leaders on the right, and our dear social media.
You'll understand the title soon enough upon starting, but it acquires additional resonance once Trump starts vilifying immigrants and the press.
Also recommended with all my liberal-leftie heart: THE TALK by Darrin Bell.
