An enthralling journey through a house, the families it’s held over the years, and the land before the house was even constructed. Stretching the span of billions of years, McGuire takes a unique and interesting look at how time passes and how we, as the human species, are effected by it.
Here by Richard McGuire★★★
Genre: Graphic Novel/Experimental
Release Date: December 2014
Source: Library – Borrowed
On My Shelf: No
I’m just going to come right out and say it: I liked the idea of this novel better than I liked the execution.
I give McGuire total props for trying out this idea, and, honestly, it’s not that I didn’t like this one, I just didn’t think it fully lived up to it’s potential. Maybe I had a hard time connecting due to there not being any sort of concrete plot/storyline. Which, it’s not that I expected any sort of congruence with the concepts and ideas that he was trying to construe since it’s hard to find some sort of linear function when looking not only at how time passes but also at how that passing of time effects different people at different times in different ways, but I was expeciting a little something…more.
Also, since the main focus of this graphic novel is solely looking at the passage of time, that also means there’s bare bones for character development. We’re hardly introduced to anyone for long periods of time and in fact are given only short snippets of the lives of the many people who have occupied the land McGuire shows us. Don’t expect to get attached to anyone or anything.
That is one of my praises for this text, though: The impermanence of time–in a sense how unforgiving and distant we are from being able to understand it. We are shown change after change that illustrates how short our lives are in the grand scheme of the universe and how the earth continuously changes and moves on as we do, including in death and decay. I’m doing a bad job of explaining this, but I did find this approach incredibly fascinating in that sense of it all, but there was too much of a lack of connection for me to fully immerse myself in this illustration of time passing.
Switching back to good things, I will say that I really enjoyed the muted color scheme of these panels and how well everything was outlaid. The meticulous detail that went into this work was incredible and easily something to be applauded. Even if it didn’t work all too much for me, I can still appreciate the amount of time McGuire, no doubt, spent laying out each panel, each page, and each color. The art was outstanding and definitely increased my enjoyment of this work.
All in all, I think I would still recommend this. It’s easily an interesting look at life with a fresh perspective I’ve rarely seen.
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