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I didn’t read the blurb for ‘A Sister’ by Bastien Vivès and simply picked up the graphic novel due to its simple-stark cover illustration and the promise of a familial story. Guess I am to blame for not expecting a coming-of-age tale about a 13-year-old boy’s sexual awakening when a family-friend’s daughter spends the summer with them.
Plot-overview – Antoine, the teen protagonist, loves to draw different kinds of Pokémon with his younger brother Titi, and the two boys often go off to the beach by themselves to have a good time. However, when 16-year-old Hélène and her mother come to spend a few days with Antoine’s family, she introduces him to new ideas and makes him think beyond just cartoons, games, and drawings.
The artwork reminded me of melting ice cream, as if the illustrations had devolved from their original shapes and slowly smudged into slightly deformed versions of themselves. Bastien Vivès sparingly draws full faces of the characters, so often Antoine is missing his eyes, or we don’t get to see his face at all. The abstract nature of the artwork actually makes the explicit scenes involving the underage characters a little less discomforting to read.
It’s a 3 on 5 from me.
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