This is in so many ways an improvement over Kelso's Squirrel stories, in scope, artistic care, and invention, but as will be obvious, all the characters look almost completely alike! All versions of the same artichoke character. That almost singlehandedly undermines some cool stuff happening here: a fantasy world with two areas represented and in conflict with each other--People from the North who are vegetarian, herbal remedy healers, mushroom hunters, lovers, cooler people, who contrast with Southern more industrial types.. like city vs county, Us vs Canada.. yet all of whom look the same. The art work is crisp and colorful and the story seems inventive in its bringing gentle environmental issues to a fantasy story, but it is, in spite of its scope and ambition (this is her first novel, quite long versus her early, spare story collections), not that memorable to me. I think it's that I couldn't get that into the characters, or they couldn't get their hooks deeply enough into me. It looks like a kid story, cute little veggies, but isn't, exactly. . . there's some mildly but still pretty clearly adult scenes, not graphic, they're actually nice, but I'm talking categories here. And that title? Yikes. Not that indicative of the scope and ambition of the story. . . I dunno, I feel kinda badly beating up on a veggie tale with a certain kind of sweetness to it, but there it is. Cross posted from Amazon:This is the first full length graphic novel by Megan Kelso, other works by her include The Squirrel Mother and Queen of the Black Black. This story is about a land divided by a civil war. The people are never really named, but all of them have hair like artichoke leaves, but they look like humans otherwise. And when one is born among them that has hair of a queen artichoke, she becomes ruler of the land. But despite the people's best efforts to make her feel like a part of all of the land, she identifies only with the northern half. And despite the peoples best efforts a war breaks out among the sides. South vs. North. North vs. South. Through interweaving chapters we learn of the conflict through one family's history. Three different generation of the family present their stories, some from the South and some from the North.It is a deep book and powerful in its writings as it the tale unfolds of how perceptions vary upon the truth of both sides. It can be said that the book is an analogy for the Civil War of the United States in some ways, family against family, and outsiders being looked at somewhat askew and never quite fitting in. Where the book fails for me is in trying to figure out which point of time and which story that we're in. It goes back and forth so quickly and some of the characters look too much alike that it quickly becomes confusing in trying to figure out where we are in the story. In addition, the main character of the book, Bridgette, never really feels like a fully developed character to me. Its more that she's just a place holder for the story to be told around her and in the end we don't even get to see where she is in life.I wanted to like this book. I really did. It has such great reviews from folks saying it was one of the most powerful books that they had read in a long time. But I just had such trouble getting into it and keeping my interest. Perhaps I just need to read it in a different month and it will have more of an impact on me, but for now...it just doesn't work for me.
Do You like book Artichoke Tales (2010)?
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—RachieB
