Endings and Beginnings

Just before Christmas, I got given the book below (published 2010) by my thoughtful friend Nina as a congratulations present for finishing my Masters thesis.
I was a little anxious that she was telling me what had happened to all my mates while I was submerged for too long in the study-cave.


This worrying impression was strengthened by the unopened book's feel of "self-help tome". It certainly doesn't look like a picture book: at 16cm x 12.2 cm (smaller than A5), it's a very thick, hardcover volume, containing 96 pages, a number almost unheard of for a picture book.

Still, even after reading it a number of times, I had guessed it had only about half that number of pages. This miscalculation was probably due to how quickly it can be read. Voilà a typical page:


You can read the first eleven pages here.

The short, fat squatness of the book turns out to be due to its quick-flick nature. No attention span needed here. It's very clever - a comic book with a panel per page, and so the turning of the page forces you to consider each panel as a separate situation. Some of the panels are indeed one-offs, but others are part of longer sequences. So the book format itself is used to great effect - each page-turn is like unwrapping another layer in a pass-the-parcel game. There is the surprise of finding out what's just around the corner.

I'll attempt to re-create such a pause with the "scroll down". This is one of the longest sequences in the book:










































As illustrated here, the book is much less about death than about cynicism re human relations. It would be more accurately called: "All my friendships are dead", but nobody's going to buy a book that wears its misanthropy so clearly on its sleeve, right?

It's apparently a bestseller in the US, so I guess the self-described "celebutante" (ew) authors know what they're doing, removing the ship from the cover. Judging by the merchandise available and Avery Monsen's website, the "hey! look at us!" authors are using their power of design to make a quick buck via cheap shots and (cough) flogging a dead horse or two.

But the book is funny, and it gets props for originality, due to the thematic rather than narrative links in its content, so let's forget the disappointment of meeting its makers' websites.

Is it ok to read to children? Well, people who bought this on Amazon also bought "Go the Fuck to Sleep". Hee hee.

Another book which uses this technique of page-turn surprise, in a more overt way, is Sesame Street's The Monster at the End of this Book (1971).


The whole book can be read online here, and - perhaps surprisingly for a tv show branded book (even if it is Sesame Street), it's a child-friendly masterpiece. Recommended for adults also.

And if it turns out that all my other friends are dead... I guess it just means we'll hang out more, huh Phil, I mean Nina? :-)