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The Layer Method
Our top Secret time-saving technique for creating and merging balloons and tails in Illustrator.
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Friday, September 3, 2010
Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds
Brutal satire and an engaging tale
Even if you haven’t read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, you’ve probably heard of it. The French baker, and avid reader, at the center of Posy Simmond’s excellent book, however, is perhaps too familiar with the book. An English couple moves in next door to him and his wife in Normandy, France, and the curious baker, Joubert, soon learns that the woman’s name is Gemma Bovery. “Martine! Martine! Devines quoi! Guess what!” he exclaims to his wife, “Madame Bovary’s next door!!! I mean it. They’re English, but they’re called BOVARY!.” She’s unimpressed, and warns her husband to mind his own business. He doesn’t. In no time, he’s fixated and obsessed with his new neighbors and inexplicably wrapped up in the tragic events that unfold under his prying gaze.
Simmonds uses several volumes of Gemma’s diaries as an extension to Joubert’s own account of events. The diaries provide a way for the reader to get to know Gemma, since the narrative takes place after she has died of mysterious circumstances. Early on, the first page actually, the reader not only finds out that Gemma has died, but that Joubert feels like he has played a role in her death. He soon visits her husband Charlie to console him and notices that Gemma’s diaries are stacked in a box on the kitchen counter. Not able to resist the temptation, he grabs a few volumes while Charlie’s back is turned and mumbles goodbye. Once Joubert is safely tucked into his home, and armed with an English dictionary, the adventure begins.
Simmonds uses an exciting mix of the traditional comics structure of panels and word balloons, handwritten diary entries, and meaty paragraphs of text adjacent to illustrations. This could be a bit jarring to an unsuspecting reader, but the transitions between text and comic are seamless, leaving little doubt on the page which path your eyes should take. The closest comparison to these pages would be an illustrated children’s book that contains both words and pictures. Gemma Bovery is a more complex in depth and content, but the parallels are certainly valid. It’s not a strict comic in any sense, but it’s close enough that it is a comic - a very good and often very funny comic. (This story was originally published as a comic strip in The Guardian)
Simmonds has an excellent, feathery line. Her style is equally cartoonish and realistic with exaggerated features, but she crafts accurate backgrounds and settings. Her pencil lines are left uninked, which gives her work a soft and gentle appearance that compliments her heroine and the romantic events that whirl around her. Often, she uses a gray ink wash to add texture to her backgrounds. This makes the backdrop of the story even more convincing.
Like the Bovary in the classic book, Gemma suffers and dies. She’s bored with her husband Charlie; he’s flighty and largely ignores her. He’s more concerned with relenting to his ex-wife’s demands for money and weekends with the kids than with his new bride, and the move to the French countryside, after an initial shine, makes Gemma feel isolated. The thrill of fresh bread and produce soon wears off and Gemma’s mood darkens – until she winds up in the arms of a rich and handsome young gadabout. These events take place under the sharp eyes of the baker Joubert. He notices the initial conversation between Gemma and the young man, and then notes the sudden change in her weight and style of dress. Her husband Charlie seems oblivious to these changes.
Joubert begins following Gemma when she slips past his house, and then later he uses her diaries as a way of filling in the information that he missed the first time. The reader is right at Joubert’s shoulder as he discovers new details and fills in others. From the first page of the story, we know she died under mysterious circumstances, but we don’t know how. We’re as captive as Joubert is as he keeps going next door to refresh his stash of fresh diaries.
Since Simmonds uses a great deal of text and passages from Gemma’s diary, the tale feels richer than such a slim volume should. You’ll find a lot of story packed into these over-sized 106 black and white pages, and the story is compelling and fun enough to make you want to finish the book at one setting.
Here’s the link to Gemma Bovery at the Pantheon Graphic Novels website and to help you get a better idea of how Simmonds builds the pages of her book, here are a few online page samples from the Pantheon Website: page one and page seven.
Gemma Bovery is a hardcover with an arresting dark blue cover featuring a shot of the title character with her black overcoat partly open at the chest. Underneath the coat is a bright red, lacy bra. It’s a striking image for a memorable book. You can get your own copy for $19.95 at almost any bookstore in the graphic novel section. It’s a ridiculous $13.47 on Amazon.
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