If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be branching out into graphic novels this year I would have laughed. I was first surprised by them when I began to read a Korean Manhwa named Goong by SoHee Park. Then, just last week I fell in love with The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.
And then yesterday I picked up The Arrival by Shaun Tan and didn’t put it down until I’d finished it.
Unlike Goong and Hugo Cabret, this book does not have words. Even the notes and signs are in a made-up language. The entire story is told in pictures – beautiful, sepia colored pictures. This is the story of a man leaving his family and his country behind (a country besot with terrors of its own) and finding a new place for them to live. It’s a story of fear and hope, loss and gain, adventure and home.
There is one moment – one set of pictures in this book that made me choke up and tears filled my eyes. When the man arrives in the strange country and opens his suitcase, an image appears that made me think of opening my suitcase for the first time after leaving home. That scent, the memories all seem to collide and you picture your family right there , for a moment it’s captured and then it fades and just the items remain.
At first I thought this might be science-fiction because there were so many strange elements. Alien looking creatures (as evidenced by the cover), strange methods of transportations.. and then as I got into the book I realized that the story being told here is how our country must look to those arriving in it. The sights, sounds, smells – everything assaulting our senses is different, new, amazing, thrilling and terrifying. Shaun Tan captured that so well in this book and through a story of pictures managed to tell a more captivating immigration story then I’ve ever actually read through written word.
