This large format (9" x 10") full-length work is a true graphic novel.  A follow-up to her excellent Gemma Bovery, which re-imagined Flaubert's Madame Bovary at the same time that it commented on the literary imagination, Tamara Drewe uses Thomas Hardy's Far from the Maddening Crowd as its jumping off point to explore contemporary mores as well as their contemporary representations.  Ms. Simmonds hails from the UK -- where she is far more widely known and respected than here in the US -- and this book was originally serialized in The Guardian UK.  She is one of the most culturally sophisticated and literary cartoonists in the business, capable of weaving into her narrative a wealth of cultural history and a density of literary allusion that are, for the most part, simply off the radar of her peers.  As with Gemma Bovery, Tamara Drewe is a hybrid, combining short blocks of prose exposition with longer stretches of comics story-telling that make the best of both worlds and an equally pleasurable reading experience.  Here's a video composed of an audio interview with Ms. Simmonds explaining her working method and a slideshow of her sketches, roughs and finished artwork for this book.

Long known to readers of the British newspapers, The Guardian (which, by the way, awarded their 2001 literary prize to Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware) and The Independent, which serialized this work, Posy Simmonds brings a sophisticated literary sensibility to the world of Comics.  In Gemma Bovery, she reimagines Flaubert's Madame Bovary as it might be,  should it unfold at the close of the twentieth century.  It's also a piece of meta-fiction as well, with its own unique twist on the literary fashion set in motion by A.S. Byatt's Possession of having twentieth century lives intertwine with those of eighteenth century literary characters.    In Gemma Bovery, Ms. Simmonds shows us how life can seem to be imitating art in the mind of one obsessed with a particular work -- in this case Madame Bovary --  and that, perhaps, it is possible that such an obesssion can lead, in actuality, to life being molded after art; and, then again, perhaps not.  She's definitely studied the late work of comics master Will Eisner's later work, and this study has reaped substantial dividends for the reader.  Simmonds' has concocted a unique blend of text, illustration and comics that manages to retain the best of both worlds and communicates a wealth of emotional terrain.  Students of comics will be intrigued to discover which aspects of the storytelling process are parcelled out to the visuals and which to the text.  This piece is quite worth a look, and we encourage you to seek it out.  Gemma Bovery stands right at the intersection of the broad boulevard of purely prose literature and the freshly laid tar on the side street of comics lit and stands to appeal to adventurous readers going both ways.

This book is filled with page after page of Posy Simmonds's fantastically well drawn, witty, insightful comics about middle-aged members of the English middle class who emerged from the idealism of the 1960s into the realities of the conservative 1980s. It is work has been criminally neglected here in the USA .   Mrs Weber's Omnibus  was published in the UK in 2012.  This import edition combines six previous collections of the strips that originally ran in The Guardian UK throughout the 1980s (from 1979 to 1993, to be more exact) into one massive (over 4 lbs), horizontally formatted (10 1/2”  x 8 1/2”), 488 page hardcover volume which presents the complete collected strips that ran in the Guardian throughout the 1980s (from 1979 to 1993, to be more exact).

The strips collected here are the equivalent of US Newspaper Sunday strips, taking up a half-page of the newspaper.  Most are self contained, but there are various degrees of continuity involved.  Also, there are a number of strips that must have originally appeared as full pages in The Guardian and so are reproduced as two-pagers here (they all divide neatly, so there's no weird reformatting involved).  One of the books collected is a duo-tone with red dropped into the B&W, and there's also a full color section towards the end, but the bulk of the work is in black & white. 

And what work it is!  Casual readers will find plenty to enjoy simply reading the strips, but comics fans and, particularly, fellow cartoonists, will discover extra layers of enjoyment and appreciation at the nuanced cartooning, attention to detail and general all around high level of craft embodied in the work collected here.

RECOMMENDED!

Found in the Archives:  ONE nice copy. (there may be another...)