26 Books

With Woman’s World, I was the first person on 26 books to review a graphic novel. And now another first – we’ll see what the book purists say – my review of a completely wordless graphic novel by Andrzej Klimowski. Where Graham Rawle’s was a graphic novel formed by a painstaking collage of text and type, Klimowski relies on the power of his 300 images alone to spin a haunting tale about a man’s search for his abducted family.

Lest anyone think I’m making up numbers with this title or trying to make my approach to the 26 book finish line that much quicker and easier, I’ll admit up front that I’m not quite sure I follow what’s happening in the story and spent a lot of time poring over each frame. I’m a fan of Klimowski’s. He is an illustration tutor at the Royal College of Art, where I graduated, and some of his acclaimed poster designs are in the V&A’s national poster collection. I was beguiled by the deceptive simplicity and starkness of his recent novel, Horace Dorlan, and will likely post about that in the coming weeks. The Secret is one of Klimowski’s earlier works and takes the reader on a journey from an urban domestic setting to a dark and sinister (alternate?) world populated by insects and shorn middle-aged professor types. DeChirico-like surreal cityscapes lead the un-named protagonist down stairwells and through vaulted archways into sombre museum/ mausoleum spaces as he searches for his children and wife.

Sadly, I’m not clever enough to say I grasped all the nuances, but I enjoyed the journey nonetheless.

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