By: Dash Shaw Publisher: Fantagraphics Books Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Fantagraphics Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 720 Publication Date: June 04, 2008
Product Description: A major new graphic novel from a major new talent.
The Bottomless Belly Button is a comedy-drama that follows the dysfunctional adventures of the Loony Family.
After 40-some years of marriage, Maggie and David Loony shock their children with their announcement of a planned divorce. But the reason for splitting isn't itself shocking: they're "just not in love any more." The announcement sparks a week long Loony family reunion at Maggie and David's creepy (and possibly haunted) beach house.
The eldest child, Dennis, struggles with his parents' decision while facing difficulties of his own in his recent marriage. Believing that his parents are hiding the true reasons behind their estrangement, Dennis embarks on a quest to discover the truth and searches through clues, trap doors, and secret tunnels in attempt to find an answer. Claire, the middle child, is a single mother whose 16-year-old daughter, Jill, is apathetic to the divorce but confounded by Claire and troubled by her own "mannish" appearance. The youngest child, Peter, is a hack filmmaker suffering from paralyzing insecurities who establishes an unorthodox romance with a mysterious day care counselor at the beach.
In a six-day period rich with atmospheric sequences, these characters stumble blindly around one another, often ignoring their surroundings and consumed by their own daily conflicts. Visually, Shaw employs a leisurely storytelling pace that allows room for exploring the interconnecting relationships among the characters and plays to his strength as a cartoonist—small gestural details and nuanced expressions that bring the characters to vivid and intimate life.
If the controversial R.D. Laing wrote an episode of The Simpsons, it might read something like The Bottomless Belly Button.
Graphic Life Shaw's marvelous graphic novel extols the emotional distance between family members and the individuals from themselves. Members of the aptly- and humanity inclusively-named Looney family gather to receive word that their parents are divorcing after 40+ years of marriage. What unfolds is a tripartite discovery process of themselves, their relationships both inside and out of the family, and their place in life's plan. Had Shaw's novel been completely text, it's place in the literature section of the bookstore alongside John Banville, Lionel Shriver, and Jennifer McMahon would be assured. However, since it is a graphic novel and comprised of predominately illustrations over text, it's in no bookstore that I've been able to discover. However, Shaw's work is assuredly adult and literary and resonates with themes illustrative of the human condition. Pick it up.
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