The Delicacy by James Albon. Top Shelf, 2021. 9781603094924. 320pp.
Two brothers get a surprise inheritance and move away from their small island town (and their mother). One (Tulip) opens a restaurant in the outskirts of London; the other (Rowan) grows veggies at the property they inherited. Tulip becomes more and more obsessed with success and fame; Rowan feels a bit abandoned and unappreciated. At the center of their restaurant’s menu is an unusual, tasty mushroom that they find on a small plot on their land. It’s soon in every dish the restaurant serves. The secret to cultivating it is a doozy, and leads to all kinds of conflict between the brothers.
There’s a remarkable page that conveys the taste of this mushroom, the first time Tulip tastes one, that wowed me. But it’s Albon’s composition and his perfect, unpredictable use of color that pulled me through the book.
Love Languages by James Albon. Top Shelf, 2025. 9781603095570. 176pp.
This story of friendship, language, and eventually love is Albon’s best graphic novel yet. It’s about two foreigners who meet in Paris: Sarah, who’s got an office job managing a bunch of jerks, and Ping, an au pair with her own work frustrations.
They mix French, English, and Cantonese to get to know each other after a few chance meetings. The brilliance of the book is not only the writing, which is wonderful; it’s the way Albon conveys the way the two dip in and out of languages and combine them. It’s something I’ve never seen done before, and it’s even more amazing after they get to know each other better. (Albon also does a great job expressing Sarah’s language fatigue and confusion at other points in the book.)
