Bastien Vivès

A love a good caper and I love all things French, so this is a win-win. The Grande Odalisque is a campy, over-the-top, and fun crime caper book featuring a duo of female art thieves who are reckless in their pursuit of classical paintings in the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre. The characterization is a bit thin but you can sense that Carole and Alex have a complex relationship.

Violent, funny, fast-paced, and sexy in that very French way, this comic is a quick read for crime fans. And the art show more is astounding. show less

A meandering and low-key coming of age story is really just an adolescent male fantasy about a sexual awakening driven by a older girl. I might have gotten into it a little more, but I have no desire to see sexually explicit scenes with a 13-year-old boy and the ending just splats down with a "so that happened" c'est la vie shrug without dealing with or processing anything. And it gets even creepier with the incestual implications of the title and the imagined sibling connection suggested by show more a pair of otherwise unrelated miscarriages.

An aside: I'm not sure I've ever seen a longer sequence featuring a jigsaw puzzle in any graphic novel. Is it weird that watching the main characters work a puzzle for a dozen pages was my favorite part of the book? It almost makes me want to break out one of the new ones I've been neglecting down in the basement. show less

The artwork in this book seems to have made a strong impression on me, as it was hypnopompia fodder--for a couple of months after reading Taste of Chlorine, one of the images I'd often see when awakening was that of a swimming-bath roofed over with glass and enclosed by two tiers of corridors with many doors. I'd struggle to remember when I was in that place, and it was only when fully awake that I'd recall its source was the Vives..

The story is very simple indeed. A lad of perhaps 15 goes show more swimming in this pool each Wednesday. He becomes friendly with another teen-ager he meets there, one who has inexplicably given up competitive swimming and who gives him pointers on swimming technique. Sometimes she doesn't show; once she turns up at the pool with an older chap. After being asked a serious question by the lad, she mouths to him underwater an unintelligible reply. That's all, really, but a faint air of mystery underlying the events gives the story an unexpected depth.

The artwork is distinctive and well-considered, coloured with a limited palette suited perfectly to the setting. And the subtly-told story is a welcome change from the full-on portrayals of angst, of life-changing first love, or of coming-of-age moments more commonly found in comics--and in novels, for that matter--with teen-aged protagonists. It's a book I'll probably re-read and for the present would recommend without reservation. show less

A young woman in college feels empowered to make changes in her life -- not necessarily for the better, but different at least -- thanks to a borrowed silk blouse that boosts her confidence in her beauty.

The whole time I'm reading it, I hear Spike Lee yelling over and over, "It's gotta be the shoes!"

Anyhow, it all seems very shallow and leaves me wondering how different it would have been with a female author.

p.s., I finally realized what this really reminds me of. Does anyone remember when show more Cinemax offered softcore porn movies in the '90s? This totally feels like something they would have optioned for their lineup. show less