Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“In honor of your talents, we’d like to give you a carte blanche! Complete control. Bear in mind, it will be a national icon, extolling our virtues. Anything is acceptable. Except of course, anything unacceptable.”
If you are a fan of art, grim dystopian fiction and paradoxes, “A Shining Beacon” by James Albon could be just the right pick for your reading time. The graphic novel follows Francesca Saxon, an artist who lives an idyllic, quiet, almost anonymous life in a sleepy seaside town with her husband, until the government summons her to the capital, commissioning a mural for an upcoming state-of-the-art sports facility, which is supposed to be ‘a shining beacon’ for the nation. And even though Francesca is given a free hand with what she wants to paint, a censorship committee keeps rejecting her ideas, extending her short stay into a nightmare of sorts. From a celebrated artist, to a suspected terrorist, Francesca has a roller-coaster ride in the city which ends in inevitable tragedy.
James Albon’s artwork in “A Shining Beacon” is a misty mix of modern strokes, that’s combined with the post-impressionist style of Van Gogh, with a lot of blues and yellows dominating the color palette. Albon used a similar style in “The Delicacy”, a gripping graphic novel about two siblings’ journey into the chaotic world of fine-dining. Both his storytelling and art-style has improved over time, as I failed to enjoy his messy brushstrokes in “Her Bark & Her Bite”, which came out before these other works, even though the colors are quite similar. But of-course, art is highly subjective, so other readers may not perceive his illustrations they same way.
In a clever ploy, James Albon doesn’t name the country “A Shining Beacon” is set in, the place is simply referred to as ‘nation’ or ‘country’ throughout the novel. So the story serves as a generic yet interesting critique of totalitarian regimes and censorship, all seen through the eyes of a young artist. Francesca is hired by the government only after a thorough background check reveals she has no political record and is most likely the kind who would quietly toe their party line. The artist, on her part, is quite taken in by the luxurious stay given to her in the city during her work, but soon, the oppressive nature of the regime begins to stifle even the malleable Francesca.
Francesca’s hunt for a visual image that would prove to be ‘a shining beacon’ becomes an absurd trial, and her struggle is both representative of an artist’s ordeal to find ‘the right piece’ and the existential dread of a functionary trapped by an impossible duty to a despotic state. The climax of this graphic novel is quite unexpected, and James Albon delivers an artistic narrative that blends the political satire of George Orwell with the absurdist agony of Kafka and Camus.
Rating: 4 on 5. “A Shining Beacon” is also on Kindle Unlimited.
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