Hiroshi gets a second chance at figuring out his family.
Y’know how you can tell I’m not feeling too well? When I’m not posting, not because I’ve been more busy than usual, but because I haven’t been reading as much as usual. I’ve had a rolling migraine since the beginning of last week and yesterday I blew up at work over our sustained silent reading books. (Try to censor my students’ reading and just see what happens.) That said, it may seem like I’ve read a good bit considering I’m about to post about six books, but my reading is usually punctuated by magazines and short stories. And for the past couple of weeks, it hasn’t been.
Jonathan and I skirted competition (a la Maka-Maka) when we first encountered Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood at the Borders near my work. Long story short, for a fleeting moment we thought that the second volume was a rare find so I scrambled to buy it, although I suspect that may have been Jonathan having a bit of fun at my expense. In the first volume, 48-year-old Hiroshi Nakahara boards a train and ends up in the town he grew up in as a 14-year-old boy. Hiroshi relives a chunk of his school career and quickly finds that he never knew his family quite as well as he thought. In the second volume, Hiroshi is determined to prevent the abandonment of his family by his father as he continues to learn more about his parents’ history and dynamic. A nice story, art that makes me think of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, but I don’t expect it to serve as anyone’s gateway drug.
I also finished reading all four volumes of Steven Seagle’s American Virgin, which I have been excited about for quite some time. … Okay, now ask me if it lived up to my expectations. I actually love the premise: rock-star Bible thumper Adam Chamberlain crusades for virginity and his religion until all of the messages he claims to have received from God crumble around him. Adam must decide where his faith is in reality and what kind of person he wants to be. When the woman God “promised” would be his one true love dies in a terrorist act, Adam is left wondering if he is supposed to be without love – and completely celibate – for the rest of his life. What begins as a classic revenge story quickly turns into a gender-bending quest for Adam’s REAL real true love – no, really this time – and ultimately a reunion with his biological father. It feels a bit choppy, but even if you start to get lost in the middle, it is ultimately worth the read.
This is another book that not only tackles a subject of interest to me, but also ends just the way I would hope. And if you know me, you might guess that this leaves Adam a little ragged, a little weary, but still clinging to a variation on his original ideals. You also may guess, if you know me, that it’s a little open-ended. Read the series of four volumes for the ending if for no other reason. By the end you will thank me – just not so much in the middle.
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