Review Page: Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore
| Title: |
Strangers in Paradise |
| Author: |
Terry Moore |
| Format: |
Graphic Novel |
| Genre: |
Contemporary / Crime |
| Publisher: |
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| Date of Publication: |
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| ISBN: |
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No. of Reviews: 1
Av. Rating: 9/10
Buy this book from the Amazon website [not available].
06.10.2000 - Arcadian - 9/10
List of Reviews | Bio
SiP has two main plot threads: the relatively gentle study of the friendship between two girls, and a tense thriller featuring the Mafia.
The story of friendship concerns two young women, Katchoo and Francine, best friends since high school, who are currently sharing a house. Francine has problems with men, and Katchoo is semi-secretly in love with Francine, and the books deal with the ups and downs of their life together - shopping, going to job interviews, and skirting the edges of 'getting together'. In the crime thriller thread Katchoo deals with the aftermath of an earlier part of her life when she was involved members of the Mafia. The past comes back to haunt her, tries to kill her, and tries to embroil her once again in corrupt power games. The two sides to the story interweave seamlessly, leaving the reader in some doubt as to which story is the foil for the other: hence the genre confusion.
Terry Moore is both artist and writer; his artwork is black and white: simple line drawings, allowing it to be more expressive than most of the colour art I've seen in comics. In keeping with the dual themes of the story, the art is by turns tender, beautifully portraying the changing moods of its characters, and stark, demonstrating the horrific elements of the story. The pages layouts include poetry, words spilling out of frames, sections of prose, and lines from songs around borders, always in service to the mood of the story.
The characters are - in both senses - beautifully drawn, consistently characterised and very believable; and in the case of the two central characters, they are also very loveable. The plot is well structured: moving and involving in the case of the story of friendship, and exciting, and sometimes, scary, in the Mafia story.
But I haven't got time to write more because my flatmate has just arrived with the next installments which I havenít yet read ;-)