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Graphic novels, manwha style: The Colors Trilogy

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I purchased the three volume manwha (Korean manga) “The Color Trilogy” by Kim Dong Hwa when ALA had it listed on their initial list of best graphic novels for teens last fall. A few reviews and the super appealing art style on the cover really spoke to me, though I hadn’t really been a graphic novel reader.

I’m quite glad I took the time to read through this series, with its richly layered story.

Ehwa and her mother live in a rural town, where her mother works as a bartender at a tavern. The father had died years ago, so this was the fate of the family: mother worked hard for their money outside the home. We meet Ehwa in The Color of Earth when she is a pre-teen. She’s a definite child, intrigued and naive about the ways of the world and her culture. But as that volume progresses, we see Ehwa learn more about being a woman and the role she will play in the world. We know this will be a true coming-of-age tale from the beginning of the story, as we are introduced to rowdy and raunchy neighborhood boys.

Ehwa, in her interactions with friends and neighbors, begins to suspect that there is a lot involved in the process of becoming a woman. And Kim, in writing and illustrating this complex puzzle, introduces the reader and Ehwa to the symbolic Korean flowers — throughout all three volumes, flowers play an intricate role in romance, in development, and in social norms. It is this that helps cement what could be otherwise lewd or gratuitous aspects of the sexuality in this trilogy as cultural and sensitive.

When we have nearly concluded the first book in the series, we learn that Ehwa has fallen in love (or like, more likely) with two boys: a monk and a scholar at home from school while he nurses a broken arm. Immediately, we know the monk is out of the question, but as a reader, I really fell for him — I wanted Ehwa to pursue that opporunity. And was I lucky since he appears a few more times in the series, but in ways that aren’t necessarily what I had anticipated.

In the second installment in the series, The Color of Water, Ehwa’s mother suggests that maybe the third time is the charm when it comes to finding a life mate. And indeed, a third male comes along — Duksam. He is a field man who will later be reassigned when a trickster tries to buy off Ehwa’s mother in exchange for Ehwa herself. Luckily, Ehwa’s mother will not let this happen, but it will be Duksam who pays a price for it.

Quite honestly, I never felt much connection to Duksam as a reader. I didn’t like him, particularly with the way he is crudely introduced to Ehwa. He’s a bit presumptuous and pushy. But, he is who Ehwa begins to fall for as seasons change.

The Color of Heaven gives a satisfying conclusion to this trilogy and is just as beautifully rendered in both words and images as the prior two volumes. It is here Ehwa will be betrothed and find out the reality of being a woman. She becomes a fully realized member of Korean society, and in addition, we see a satisfying conclusion to the romance that buds between her mother and a traveling painter. Oh, and our monk will reappear, though I was certainly saddened in the end.

The Colors Trilogy is a delicate story, with marvelous art and a satisfying storyline. It is easy to identify with Ehwa and her struggles, and it is certainly not surprising that readers will find one of her potential mates as a better fit than others.

Though the book does contain nudity, sex, and some frank discussions, the sheer literary merit within the story line makes them completely appropriate and well-used for a teen audience. However, this is a series that will require a mature reader to appreciate, and I suspect it may not be an ideal introduction to manwha or a satisfying reader for diehard manga fans. Fans of graphic novels may find this a good read, particularly those who enjoy the heavy hitting literary style.

Art throughout the series is gratifying, though at times it can become confusing to distinguish among the secondary characters. Ehwa is rendered throughout her maturation quite well. In addition, each volume comes with a small concluding chapter with discussion questions, definitions of the elements of graphic novels, and even some explanation of cultural issues. I loved this, as it really helped me ensure I was getting the most out of the story.

Try this series out if you are looking for something new and different, but be particular when recommending it. This could easily become a bore or uninteresting to readers, but those who are willing to be swept up in a lush story will find this a perfect fit.

The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum

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When I saw Jenna Blum, author of the powerful Those Who Save Us, had a new book coming out, I put my name on the holds list for it . . . months ahead of time. And am I ever glad I did. As you recall, one of my favorite books of all time is Ann Patchett’s The Magician’s Assistant, and as I read The Stormchasers, I couldn’t help but see there were many similarities and my experience in reading it was so similar. This has shot to my favorites list, without a doubt.

Karena is a divorcee living near the Twin Cities, and one morning, she receives a phone call from a Wichita mental health clinic saying that her brother had been admitted as a patient, and she had been listed as one of his contact people. Funny, she thought, since they had not seen or talked to one another in 20 years, as Charles fell further and further into the depths of a few different mental illnesses. Karena, though, had always wanted to rekindle that relationship — they were twins after all — so she drops everything and chooses to go to Wichita in order to find her brother.

She was too late. Charles had left before she arrived, but she had a feeling that by following his passion, she’d find him. His passion, as you might guess, was stormchasing. Karena signs up for a storm chasing tour, and quickly finds she and fellow chaser Kevin have a great rapport . . . and Kevin himself might hold the key to helping Karena track down her brother.

The Stormchasers is written in present tense, which at the onset is a bit jarring, but as the story progresses, it is the ideal method for telling this tale of love, family, and passion. Like Those Who Save Us, we are thrust into the depths of family life and challenges with loving and accepting who we are within our families and the ever-changing nature of family dynamics. Set amid the heartland of America, Blum lovingly depicts the people and places that are too often ignored in literature. But it’s not just a loving portrayal: it’s realistic and gritty, giving readers a true sense of life in a small town.

Obviously, the stormchasing is a metaphor for the family and for the relationship between Karena and her brother Charles. But it’s well-done, and it provides further for the setting, which is itself a character in the story.

I’m purposefully leaving out a lot of the plot because I knew very little going in. I will say that this story travels two distinct time periods: the present and 20 years before then. Something horrible happened in the lives of Charles and Karena on their 18th birthday — the time immediately before Charles went off radar. This again is where the stormchasing fits in, but it never felt forced nor too much like the author was trying just a little too hard.

Lest I not forget, there is romance here too, and at times, it gets a little hot. So while there’s drama in the story, there’s also a little love to resettle you. Maybe!

One issue I had with the book was the end: I thought the epilogue was unnecessary and almost condescending to the reader. After 350 fantastic pages of story, the epilogue was tacked on and did more telling than showing. I’m mostly pretending it didn’t exist in the book, since the last chapter ending fine enough for me.

Back to an original assertion I made: this book reminded me a lot of Patchett’s gem The Magician’s Assistant. There is travel among places and family secrets waiting to be revealed page after page. The development of setting is strong, and the characters each have their own quirks that make them evolve from page one to page 350 and beyond. Blum uses metaphor in the same manner as Patchett here, in a simultaneously obvious and brilliant manner. And as for me, I read it in the same way, falling deep into the story and staying up far too late to find out what was going to happen next.

I’m both sad and glad this is only Blum’s second book. Sad because I have to wait for her next one (which could take a few years, the time frame between this and Those Who Save Us) and glad because she spends the time to write something powerful and worthwhile. The Stormchasers will be staying with me for a long time, and I am excited to pass this one off to my adult fiction readers at work.

Summer Reading Challenge

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Inspired by Michelle at GalleySmith and Abby at Abby (the) Librarian, I, too, am joining in on the summer reading challenge for adults. I am a good reader of adult non-fiction, but I’m not as strong with adult fiction.

This summer, between June 15 and September 15, I will read or listen to 10 adult fiction titles. I am going to try to review them all here, as well.

You can check my progress on this post throughout the summer.

Do you have a summer reading goal? If not, here’s your shot to join in the fun and challenge yourself.

A summer of reading adult fiction:
1. The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum
2. Golden Grove by Francine Prose
3. Greyhound by Steffan Piper
4. Cum Laude by Cecily von Ziegesar
5. I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson
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The Real Estate

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I’ve mentioned once or twice I am a pretty big non-fiction reader. I don’t review a lot of it because much is super specific and wouldn’t have wide appeal. But today’s your big day. I’m giving you a quick peek into a few of the real estate books I’ve read and found to be quite readable and interesting.

House Lust by Daniel McGinn was one of the first books on this topic I read and fell in love with. McGinn is a writer for Newsweek, so his style was fluid and easy to follow.

This particular title published January 2008, right around the crash of the housing market. But, considering how long it takes to research and write, this book was put together right as the housing market was where there was a ton of money to be made. I read it in the summer of 2008, so the housing market was just beginning to nose dive.

McGinn’s book discusses how American culture has always had an obsession with housing, and in the high times of real estate, there was a ton of money to be made (and spent!). This book focuses very little on the financing aspects of real estate and much more on how we obsess with what features a home has, what areas of the home need to have the most value, and perhaps the part I loved most, our obsession with reality home television. It was interesting to learn how people began falling in love with HGTV’s House Hunters and with the obsession we have with the notion of square footage and price per square foot, the writers of the show rewrote it to include this information.

This is also the book where I learned about the power of the website Zillow. Did you know people used to hold (and maybe still do!) hold Zillow parties where they’d get together and price all of the homes in the area to see where they stood up?

If the social aspect of real estate interests you, this is a good pick. I noted in my review of this title 2 years ago that I found his style a little grating and that some of the really interesting stuff (to me!) got less time than I wish it did. Thinking back on this title in comparison with the two I’m going to talk about next, this is a terrifying look at how the real estate market got to where it is now. I might need to reread it, simply to see where the signs were so clear. This will both interest and sicken readers, which is what a good piece of non-fiction should do. Check out the website if you want more info or want to read an excerpt.

So, now that we know about the obsession American culture has with homes, how about what happens when we can’t afford what we lust for? Alyssa Katz, in Our Lot, published in June 2009, deep in the heart of recession. Of course, take some of that with a grain of salt when you consider the time period of her writing and researching.

Katz, like McGinn, is a journalist and writes for a number of outlets. In Our Lot, she tackles the topic of American greed and how it ultimately came to cause the collapse of the housing market. She writes fluidly — and with less grate then McGinn — making a book that could otherwise be overwhelming with its jargon and technicality on banking and financing really accessible. And utterly terrifying.

I read this book while trying to get my own mortgage, and it made me eternally grateful for the struggles we had in attaining our financing. Reading about how bankers utterly deceived people in order to build a profit made me sick to my stomach, and it made me reevaluate how I had perceived the great real estate collapse (more on this in a second). For the most part, I thought it was even-handed politically. Katz gives us some insight, too, into how we can get our obsessions in check for a much sounder, safer real estate world. This book will teach you a lot about the banking side of real estate, and it should be read in companion to House Lust.

If you want more information, she maintains a nice real estate and financing blog on her website.

Last, but certainly not least, I finished up Edmund Andrews’s May 2009 title Busted this week. If Katz’s title can be called a good look at the “faceless” side of real estate, I think that Andrews’s title could be called the face of greed.

Andrews is a journalist for The New York Times and more specifically, an economic reporter pulling in a 6-digit salary every year. In the midst of the housing frenzy, he chose to invest in a house on a low-doc mortgage well beyond anything he could ever imagine to afford. HE KNEW THIS going in, and yet, he followed his lust and jumped into it.

Busted does a little bit of what Katz’s book does in unraveling the complexities of the housing collapse on the banking side, but what made this book stand out to me was that Andrews himself is a person facing foreclosure and the loss of his house. He gives us the background into how banks were misleading underrepresented groups with subprime lending, as well as how bankers and underwriters were approving (and even encouraging) applicants to lie or not even mention important things like income in their mortgage applications. Reading this after the hellacious experience I had getting a mortgage made me grateful again it was such a horrible experience.

That said, this book shows us the utter greed people like Andrews brought to the collapse of the housing market. He, with his 6-figure job, background in economics, and education, knew better than to do what he did, but because he was lusting after more (see House Lust), he chose to jump in anyway. And it doesn’t work. This is his attempt to document it.

Unfortunately, while this book reads well and does a good job of putting a face to the crisis, I never once felt sympathetic for Andrews. I felt even less sympathetic when I found out later he omitted some pretty important details in his experiences (like the fact his new wife had filed for bankruptcy twice). Reading this in conjunction with Katz’s title, though, was important because it emphasizes that there was no one cause for why real estate fell to pieces. It was a combination of greed from a number of sources, as well as deception from a number of sources. Bonus: he has a little report, too, in the NYT for your reading pleasure.

If you have even the slightest interest in our current plight, read these. Read them each with a grain of salt, of course, as you would any non-fiction title. They will inform you and inform each other. Even if you have no background in real estate or financing, you will find all three accessible (and skimmable for if you find yourself bored by some details).

Mercury by Hope Larson

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Generations apart, Josey and Tara have more than just DNA and a family home in common: they’re both holders of a necklace with mystical powers that causes both torment and closure for their quests.

Intrigued? That’s the premise of Hope Larson’s new graphic novel Mercury. Told in alternating voices — depicted through panels set on a white page (Tara’s modern story) and panels set on a black page (Josey’s story a few generations in the past). Although jarring at first, this set up makes sense when one has read through a few pages of both. This method makes perfect sense.

Josey’s family is poor, and when a stranger named Asa Curry stumbles upon their Nova Scotia homestead claiming to have a power of prospecting, they are intrigued. When Asa really finds gold, well, things turn from exciting to downright ugly. Let’s just say there’s some death, some deception, and at the end, Josey is left with a very strange necklace.

Flash to the present, where we have Tara, who has lost everything because her house burnt down a few months ago. Mom is torn up by it and has relocated while Tara has reentered school after a few years of homeschooling. Tara’s Aunt Janice has found a box of old jewelry from her mother and she pulls out a strange necklace that seems to have a prospecting power to it. Of course, she doesn’t know this right away but instead becomes many poor students’ personal hero in the meantime.

Larson’s graphical style is very appealing, and her storytelling has a wonderful magical realistic to it. I thoroughly enjoyed the weaving of the past with the present, along with the tool of the necklace to tie the generations together in an unexpected manner. This was a well-paced book that begged me to reread, and reread I did. Because there’s the magical element, it was worthwhile going back to pick up the threads that lead to the exciting ending.

I found both Tara and Josey to be fully fleshed characters, and I found myself caring a lot about their individual stories. I didn’t, however, find myself connecting or investing much time into any other characters, though, including Tara’s love interest or Mr. Curry — that, I think, might be problematic for many readers, as he is an integral role in the story.

Mercury is appropriate for teens through adults, as anyone in those age groups will appreciate the art and the story. Language and graphics are appropriate, and I don’t think there’s anything surprising. This might be a good book to hand to your fans of magical realism, both in graphic novels and in traditional novels. You can feel comfortable giving this to those a little skeptical about the graphic novel format, as Larson’s a reputable author and illustrator and this book does not throw in those sometimes surprisingly revealing panels. We’re all clean here!