The Property Hardcover Author: Visit Amazon's Rutu Modan Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1770461159 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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TV producer Mica Segal accompanies her grandmother, Regina, on the old lady’s first return to Warsaw since she fled, pregnant by a gentile with Mica’s late father, to Palestine in 1939. On the plane, the son of a friend of Regina’s ebulliently accosts the women and thereafter seems to show up wherever they go, even separately. Mica shakes him by dodging into a café, where she meets a charming Pole who leads Jewish history tours. Not by chance, Regina comes on her own to the same café to meet an old man who lives in the building—yes, Mica’s grandfather. While the purpose of the trip is to assert Regina’s title to a building her parents had owned, what develops is an intrafamilial tiff, an ultimately fulfilling reunion, and the possible start of a romance. Modan’s dialogue is smart and nuanced to match a drawing style awfully reminiscent of Hergé’s Tintin and up to the most complimentary comparison with it. Nicely varied panel size and earth-tone coloration further distinguish this gratifying work of comics realism. --Ray Olson
Review
"Modan is masterful at creating complex motivations, exploring the confusion her characters create in each other and, more fundamentally, in themselves." —Los Angeles Times
"My comic book of the year, by a mile, is Rutu Modan's The Property... in which Mica Segal, a young Israeli woman, travels to Warsaw with her irascible grandmother to help her reclaim the apartment building she and her family were forced to give up in 1940...This, believe me, has everything you could possibly want in a comic: great pictures, a multilayered story, mystery, sharp wit."—The Guardian's Graphic Books of the Year
"What The Property most resembles is an excellent independent film, full of nuanced performances and funny lines... Modan's artwork is lovely and understated; it's the cleverness of her storytelling that shines brightest here."—Salon.com's Unforgettable Graphic Novels of 2013
"Modan’s clear line art delineates the complex web of loves, lies, and invented pasts. This beautifully realized narrative shows how history shapes us but cannot destroy us."—Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2013
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Direct download links available for Download The Property Hardcover
- Hardcover: 232 pages
- Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (May 14, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1770461159
- ISBN-13: 978-1770461154
- Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Rutu Modan is an Israeli-born artist living with her family in London and "The Property" is her second full-length graphic novel. Her first was the wonderfully drawn and written book, "Exit Wounds". Curiously, "The Property" is the second graphic novel I've read and reviewed this week. The other one was "Letting It Go" by Miriam Katin. Both Katin and Modan's books are about Jewish women taking trips of discovery to the European countries that either they or a family member fled before or after WW2. Both books are about how the past can be integrated into the present, and maybe even, the future.
"The Property" is a story about a young woman who is accompanying her aged grandmother back to Warsaw from Israel in an attempt to straighten out some legal rights to a building the older woman may - or may not - own. The property, owned by her parents, who perished in the Holocaust, is never quite defined til the end of the book. Was it a mansion or a factory, or even, possibly, the current Warsaw Hilton! Legal title is up-for-grabs among various people; some family members, some Christian Poles who had been living in her parent's apartment since the war. Mica, the granddaughter, seems at loose-ends in her own life in Israel after her father's death. The father was the son of the grand-mother, Regina.
I don't think I'm being dramatic when I write that for Polish Jews who fled the country during the war and afterward, returning to Poland - even for a visit as Regina and Mica are doing - can be quite emotional. What went on during the war, with Polish Christians often turning on their Jewish neighbors, has been thoroughly written about and I'm sure not getting into it in this review.
The book begins with Regina and Mica traveling on an ElAl flight from Tel Aviv to Warsaw.
Rutu Modan's second graphic novel, The Property, is her best book yet and one of the best comics of the year. Mica Segal and her grandmother Regina head from Israel to Warsaw to reclaim family property that was lost in World War 2. But as Mica soon realises, her grandmother has other reasons for returning to her former home that has to do with her grandmother's recently deceased son, Reuben, and a life left behind long ago.
Modan takes an already interesting story from the beginning and slowly peels away the layers as it goes to reveal an even more startling story underneath, so I don't want to talk too much about the book's contents - part of its compelling hold on the reader is the way the story swerves from one direction to a completely different one. There are subtle clues along the way as characters behave strangely though it's still surprising once we discover what it's really about and very moving as well.
At the heart of what makes this story so involving are the relationships, especially Mica and Regina's. There's a genuine closeness between the two that's very real, portrayed convincingly by Modan in small scenes like Mica helping her elderly grandmother shower and dress, or the two arguing (mostly because Regina's overwhelmed by the real reason she's in Warsaw and can't tell Mica) and Regina not speaking to Mica, childishly, despite being several decades older (and therefore wiser?). Regina is a sometimes difficult woman to like but she's multi-faceted, complex and real, as is Mica.
Regina and Roman's relationship too is maybe the most memorable in the book.
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