Graphic Novel Review: Return to Eden by Paco Roca
Posted on November 28, 2024 at 6:45 am by Gene Ambaum
Return to Eden by Paco Roca. Translated by Andrea Rosenberg. Fantagraphics, 2024. 9781683969310. 178pp.
This graphic novel opens in a cosmic moment of nonexistence to begin to explore the ninety years of its subject, Antonia’s, life. (She’s Roca’s mother.) It feels odd at the beginning, but it brilliantly introduces the comics format (along with photography, which the book also uses) as a way to fix moments in time. And it sets up what I found to be a perfect ending (wow!) but you have to get there by reading the book (no peeking ahead.) (I’m talking to you, Silver.)
Antonia grew up in post-WWII Spain, and the book contains the three photographs of her that were taken before she was twenty. In one she’s with her older sister Vicentita and her husband. In the next, she’s holding a little girl on a toy horse (she was the girl’s nanny). And in the third, she’s at the beach with a few members of her family in 1946. It’s this last photo that’s very important to Antonia — near the end of her life, after she’s moved to a new apartment, she can’t find it, and she asks God for help to make it turn up. This photo is also at the center of the book, which tells about Antonia’s life by exploring her family members, their relationships and personalities, and the world Antonia lived in as a young woman. And that all sets up the magical, perfect ending, too.
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