Emily Carroll

This is a chilling and masterfully crafted collection of eerie tales that feel like a more modern riff on the Grimm's brothers' tales, with their own fantastical twists. While all five stories are different, they each have a common setting: the woods. Carroll's mesmerizing artwork and storytelling transport readers to a world where darkness lurks just beyond the shadows. Carroll's haunting stories are told alongside beautiful illustrations using just three colors: black, white, and red. The show more effect of these stark colors and vivid images creates a haunting atmosphere that sticks with the reader long after they've closed the book. All of the stories end with a cliffhanger, inviting the reader to use their imagination even more. The horror of Carroll's work exposes themes of guilt, jealousy, and rage at expectations, drawing the reader in and keeping them captivated throughout. show less

Carroll cleverly blends visual styles and genre tropes, while shifting emphasis between themes and plot, to wrong-foot reader expectations of where the story is going, what is really going on. It starts with the title: A Guest in the House suggests both a reference to Du Maurier's Rebecca and to ghosts, and each is reinforced soon enough through visuals and plot. (After my first reading I discovered a 1944 American film noir with a similar title and broadly similar premise.)

Like film colour show more design, Carroll brings a strong visual impact to her story, recognisable from her earlier collection Through The Woods, less stylised here and employing a broader palette. This design is not only for appearances but contributes important suggestions for the storyline and character development.

The ending arrives abruptly, and from various reviews my initial confusion is shared by others. I've decided my specific interpretation is less important than that the ambiguity prompted me to revisit various aspects of the story, considering anew details previously missed or confidently interpreted and now coming across more nuanced. Surely this climax is thematically resonant even while raising questions about the plot. Trauma begets trauma. show less

Anderson’s timeless and important tale of high-school sexual assault and its aftermath undergoes a masterful graphic novel transformation.

Melinda, a nascent freshman, is raped at a party shortly before the beginning of school. In an attempt to report the crime, Melinda calls 911, and the party is shut down. When the semester begins, Melinda has become a pariah who spends her days silent. In addition to internalizing the emotional aspects of the assault, Melinda is relentlessly bullied by show more her peers and often runs into her attacker—a popular senior—who delights in terrorizing her. Although Anderson’s novel came out nearly 20 years ago, this raw adaptation feels current, even with contemporary teenage technological minutiae conspicuously absent. Melinda relies upon art to work as a vulnerary; this visual adaptation takes readers outside Melinda’s head and sits them alongside her, seeing what she sees and feeling the importance and power of her desire to create art and express herself. Carroll’s stark black-and-white illustrations are exquisitely rendered, capturing the mood through a perfectly calibrated lens. With the rise of women finding their voices and speaking out about sexual assault in the media, this reworking of the enduring 1999 classic should be on everyone’s radar.

Powerful, necessary, and essential. (Graphic novel. 13-adult)

-Kirkus Review show less

Horrifying fairy-tale inflected collection of comic shorts. Absolute perfection. Carroll has an eye not only for developing grotesque images, but utilizing them with efficiency so they strike home with narrative weight and beauty.