By: Rutu Modan Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Drawn and Quarterly Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 168 Publication Date: June 12, 2007 Release Date: June 12, 2007
Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, a young man,Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father’s death, he finds himself piecing together not only the last few months of his father’s life but his entire identity. With thin, precise lines and luscious watercolors, Rutu Modan creates a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death mingles with the slow dissolution of family ties.
Exit Wounds is the North American graphic-novel debut from one of Israel’s best-known cartoonists. Modan has received several awards in Israel and abroad, including the Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem four times and Young Artist of the Year by the Israel Ministry of Culture. She is a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation.
A not-to-be-printed pilot Less then one hour. That's what it took me to read this book. The drawings are great, although a bit sloppy and carelessly in many places i.e. - eyes like dolls. The coloring is too much computer for me. Most of the time it looks like Bazooka Joe cartoon. So we left with the story which is so typical to a common-Israeli-short-story-writers. No meaning, no point in the end nor during the reading, a lot of small jokes, ironic situations, humor covering great sadness - but all comes to a boring story which I promise you'll forget ten seconds after closing the book. I don't know what's all the fuss about this book. I really don't.
What will be with these Israelis??? What will be with these Israelis? As a light comic book i would expect more but when you write a book Israeli style this is what you get. To see the conflict through Israelis eyes in a comic book that want to look for the rode of seriousness i am not sure this is the one you are looking, It seems that the book lost its way somewhere through the dealing with family problem to the Israeli-Palestinians conflict but as i was looking for 2 books from one from each side (The second one was "Palestine" by Jow sacco) this was a good choice, between the hole mass of the book you still get a real glimpse in to the Tel-Aviv/Israeli realty of constant war/fear/tension. This book is made to be read with criticism but also with a lot of understanding.
Wroth the buy.
Cheers
Stam1
Entry wounds. Rutu Modan, Exit Wounds (Drawn and Quarterly, 2007)
For the first couple of chapters of Exit Wounds, I wasn't terribly sure about it. Interesting story, yeah, but nothing that really jumped off the page. More fool me; Rutu Modan was just setting things up. The full scope of her deviousness shows up about ten pages before the end, and there's one frame in this book that made me stop dead in my tracks and say "wow." Yes, out loud.
Koby is a taxi driver. Numi is a soldier. Numi is romantically involved with Koby's estranged father, and thinks he may have been killed in a suicide bombing. The two of them, after some false starts, set out to figure out whether Koby's father really was the last unidentified body in that bus station, and in doing so expose some general weirdnesses of family life, Israeli culture, and interpersonal relations.
I'm a sucker for dumb love stories. Note that in that sentence, "dumb" is modifying not "stories", but "love". My favorite example of this particular subgenre comes from Alan Parker's film Birdy, where Matthew Modine finally has a chance to lose his virginity and totally bungles it. Numi's hysterical one-liner in Exit Wounds immediately jumps to #2 on that list. It's so stupidly naïve, and it fits so well (despite Numi being far more experienced than Matthew Modine's character in Parker's film). It's indicative of both the kind of sense of humor Modan displays throughout the book, and her willingness to make her characters suffer. And suffer they do. (No, that wasn't the "wow" moment, which I can't expose without major spoilers; you'll just have to read this for yourself to find that one. I'll give you a hint: it's a wedding picture.) Modan has a finely-tuned sense of irony, and she's not afraid to use it.
This is one for the books. Pick it up at your earliest convenience. It comes with the Goat Guarantee of Excellence. (If you don't like it, I'll refund you the price of this review!) ****
A subtle satire of family life, complicated and satisfying. I have to disagree with the other reviewers on the artwork. The art in Exit Wounds is subtle, quiet, but it's gorgeous. I was first captured by the colors--mostly muted but with very carefully situated splashes of brightness for a beautiful punch. The color combinations are absolutely evocative of the Mediterranean landscape. The story is gritty and realistic; it unfolds slowly at first, but then snowballs into one revelation after another that are pretty shocking, ironic and hilarious at the same time.
Yet it's no rollercoaster. Exit Wounds is something you kind of sink into, or it steeps in you, like tea. After my first reading, I thought it was a slight story, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I reread it and kept thinking about it. This is a comic that defies comic stereotypes of plot, mindless action and noise. Don't expect that! Expect to be very quietly seduced into the life of a boy who discovers the true identity of his father, the underhanded manipulations of family and unexpectedly finds love and integrity, all revealed in a gritty, urban and rural landscape. It is complicated but satisfying in that Modan does not take shortcuts. Life is complex, and she doesn't wrap it up with a bow.
Even better on the 2nd read Exit Wounds was bought on impulse. It turned up on my Recommended List and the summary of the product made me curious.
I'm quite pleased that I got it.
The art is, as others have noted, rather bland, but once you get into the rhythm of the narrative and dialogue, you find that the blandness serves well the story of a young man, Koby, who is forced to face his father when a young woman, Numi, comes to tell him that his father may have been killed.
What follows is a subtle love story and social commentary that happens on several levels that occurs while Koby and Numi try to find the answer of what happened to Koby's father and it is done in a style that is sparse and never overbearing.
The only reason why I knocked it down to 4 stars is that there were a few areas that I wished had been lingered on more (ex: Ruth, his aunt) rather than devoting time to Numi's mother and sister, but that's a personal quibble that other readers may not find to be a distraction at all.
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