Literary Quote of the Month

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one." - George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Is Love Eternal? Cadaver, a bittersweet love story by Jonah D. Ansell... a Review

OK, I'm a true romantic... I envision true love not bound by time or circumstance. So, I was curious when I read a blurb about  Jonah D. Ansell's graphic novel Cadaver...

A cadaver wakes up to say a last goodbye to his wife, but discovers a truth in death he didn’t know in life.

Maybe not so romantic because it's literally a corpse that comes back to life, but how about a love so strong that the man just can't lie quietly on the table until he says one last goodbye to the love of his life... his wife.

Creepy, but tender and absolutely hilarious. The graphic novel is written in rhyme, reminds me of Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortes' book, Go the F** to Sleep, not for the profanity, but for the dry humor. The accompanying artwork by Carina Simmons, Eric Vennemeyer & Abe Dieckman is great. And how it all came about is sweet... Jonah D. Ansell wrote this as a gift to his kid sister who was going to be doing what all beginning med students eventually do... working with cadavers. Jonah "simply sought to lighten her mood and mitigate her understandable fears on what was then the biggest day of her life on her path to becoming a doctor."

I don't want to ruin the punchline on this slim graphic novel (my ebook was 114 pages), so I'll just say that an adventure ensues that has a bittersweet ending to a lifetime of togetherness. If you appreciate a bit of sarcasm with your romance, Cadaver should be right up your alley. I give it 4 scalpels!

I want to thank Academy Chicago Publishers for giving me access to the ebook! I really enjoyed reading it! If you'd like to read it, it will be published Feb. 1st! ( Shouldn't that be Feb. 14th?!)

P.S. Cadaver started as a short poem for a kid sister in med school and went on to become an award winning animated short long listed for the 2013 academy awards (here's the trailer!) Now we get to enjoy it close to it's original form.

2 comments:

Carla said...

I think this would be cool to read!

Suzanne Yester said...

Hi Carla,
This is really a fun read! The short animated film trailer looked awesome too! Check it out if you get a chance.

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