PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewA book for young adults ... weave[s] together short vignettes (all sourced in its conclusion) in a spare style as a way of presenting a wide collectivity of voices. It may be most successful, though, in its ominous wordless panels—such as those of overloaded boats tipping bodies into the silent, uncaring ocean.
Riad Sattouf
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewSattouf deploys a springy black line and a striking palette of creamy pastels. The pages have a clean, almost candied-looking surface, which can exist in stark contrast to some of the horrors depicted ... This volume is dominated by life in Syria, and it’s the best of the books yet. The first to make me laugh out loud, it’s also the darkest. The book succeeds because it concentrates on his deeply strained family dynamics, and it looks outward, more explicitly than its predecessors, toward how those conflicts reflect or embody global ones. Both arenas produce violence, which is here often represented by red, coloring imagined killings (Riad’s intense fantasy life) and real pain including the harsh physical punishment of children at school, marital discord, vociferous anger.
