The Arrival (2006)

With no words, none are needed, the joys and sorrows are easily felt. ( )

I've never read a graphic novel, and I'm thrilled to have read this one first.

Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' is completely graphic, wordless. It is the story of a young father whom leaves his wife and daughter to take a long journey to a wholly different country so that he can support them. The imagery is rich and tender, truly amazing. To emphasize the entirely confusing world that immigrants enter, the graphics are completely foreign, unintelligible, overwhelming. It is easy to identify with the immigrant's predicament, and to root for him to find a place, friends, a home.

I cannot recommend this work of art highly enough.

I would especially hope that those who reduce immigration politics to simplistic chatter, would read this novel and put themselves into the main character's hat and shoes, and think carefully about what they might do if faced with a similar choice. ( )

I thought this was such a clever book. I loved how it had us guessing all the way threw and coming up with different ideas and stories. I had never seen a book like that before. I think it had a great message and would definitely recommend. ( )

I don't know how I missed this when it came out - maybe I dismissed it as just a graphic novel. There is no "just" about it. This is an impressive work of art, delivering its story of the immigrant experience with imagination and beauty. ( )

This is a beautiful book that examines, wordlessly, the experience of an immigrant in a new land. Tan captures the disorientation immigrants may feel toward their new surroundings. It depicts the journey of one man who seems both accepted and rejected by his new country. This book tells the story of a man who leaves his home and family and comes to start a new life for them all in an alien culture. Because The Arrival is a graphic novel that takes as it's setting an imaginary land with a unique language, the reader is able to enter the world as the protagonist does, completely at the mercy of the world he's trying to call home. The fine and suggestive illustrations allow the reader to experience the confusion, isolation, terror and wonder of this journey. This book helped me to appreciate the struggles my own ancestors, and everyone else in America's ancestors, must have faced in their passage of immigration. ( )