false 3416560 1596432586 9781596432581 28 10 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3416560.Bourbon_Island_1730 45196 Lewis Trondheim 1068 149 4 0 false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 08:50:21 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 18:18:05 -0700 2009
Most of the plots and characters are about escape: the fugitive slaves who just want to live, the naive ornithologist who wants to be a pirate, the pirates who are trying to be respectable citizens, the plantation owner's daughter who wants to join the fugitive slaves. And the whole book is an escape - you come into this strange place with more or less the same point of view as the ornithologist, that maybe this would be a good place to have adventures. By the end, it's clear that none of it is likely to work out that way, but it's not cynical; just an exhilarating trip that's also really sad.

It's got a deceptively light tone -- Trondheim's style is made for comedy, and not just because he always draws everyone with animal heads (using an ethnic category system like Maus, but more expressive); his timing, the way he draws action, everything is basically playful. (More than other Trondheim books I've seen, the backgrounds are very lush; the tropical foliage bursts across the panels with a kind of friendly wildness, and he saves most of his solid black inking for the plants, giving them a texture that reminds me a little of Tove Jansson's beautiful Moomin books.) But the writer uses this to sly advantage, because the darkest parts of the story are all about what we only barely see or just hear about -- all the things the cheerful colonialists have managed to ignore. In the most disturbing scene, with almost no movement, an ex-pirate turned rebel slave leader (drawn as a finely dressed, emaciated dog whose face is all bitter lines and shadows) whispers through a jail window to a newly-arrived slave (drawn as a tiny, nearly featureless, child-like puppy), tells him about the awful life that's in store, tells him it's hopeless... then throws him a knife and urges him to do some damage while he can. We see the result later, from a distance, in the corner of a panel, and none of the main characters notice.]]>