Hypericum is, I think, his most recent book to be published in English - the original copyright is 2022, and this Matt Madden-translated edition from Fantagraphics was published in early 2023.
It starts with the Howard Carter 1922 expedition that discovered Tutankhamen, which is our "B" story. The main story is set about twenty years ago - this isn't clear at first; I realized it when a cell phone was a strange and wondrous thing in one scene - and centers on Teresa, a driven young Italian woman in Berlin to be the youngest member of a team working on an exhibition of the materials Carter discovered about seventy-five years before.
Teresa is regimented, precise - the kind of person who has always just moved along a single unvarying line, on to the next thing and the next, following the path laid out for her life. She's also subject to horrible insomnia, barely getting two hours of sleep a night, burning off the hours of the dark by re-reading Carter's diary of the dig.
But on her second day in Berlin, she runs into a young man from Italy, about her age: Ruben. He's her opposite in almost every way: living in a squat, living completely randomly, doing whatever he wants. She's somewhat frustrated by him but immediately intrigued, and the two quickly start a relationship, and she moves in with him.
By the way, we learn fairly quickly that the reason Ruben is able to be so carefree is that he's a remittance man: his father gives him a large monthly allowance, so he doesn't need to pursue his art or do anything in particular to pay for his living. As always, that's a very nice life if you've happened to luck into it.
Hypericum follows those two tracks: Theresa's work and relationship with Ruben; Carter's painstaking excavation of the wonders of Tut's tomb. We mostly get Carter during Theresa's night, as if we're reading the diaries along with her. Like much of Fior's work, it's mostly quiet and character-focused; Teresa does have some big decisions to make over the course of the year or so the book covers, but she doesn't make them in a big way. The Carter sections are primarily, I think, for parallax - background on what Teresa does, history and explanation, and some thematic connections. But there's no serious drama, no real surprises in the historical sections, just methodical digging and a succession of unearthed wonders.
Fior has a painted style that feels entirely down-to-earth to me here, unshowy and matter-of-fact in both timeframes. He depicts sex and priceless Egyptian gold equally in the moment, both things that are there in his panels, both things that are interesting to look at, and of this particular moment, but not more important than that. Hypericum is a quiet book of connections, one you assemble large pieces of in your own head as you read it.
No comments:
Post a Comment