Book Review No. 7 – The Arrival by Shaun Tan

One of my dear friends gifted ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan, as a Christmas present. I was waiting for the right time to read it. When the read-a-thon came around, I thought it was a good time to read ‘The Arrival’. I finished reading it at that time, but writing the review has taken me some more time. Here it is.

Summary of the story

I am giving below the summary of the story from the publisher’s site.

In a heartbreaking parting, a man gives his wife and daughter a last kiss and boards a steamship. He’s embarking on the most difficult journey — he’s leaving home to build a better future for his family. In this wordless graphic novel, Shaun Tan captures the immigrant experience through clear, mesmerizing images. The reader enters a strange new world, participating in the main character’s isolation – and ultimately his joy.

Here is one of the summaries of the book that I liked.

“Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’ arrives just in time to take advantage of the current waves of interest in the ‘graphic novel’ and brings something new and exceptionally worthy to the form : a novel told in graphics (not cartoons), a wordless story that uses the language of silent cinema and the picture-story traditions that predate comic books. For adults, Tan’s New World offers a childlike sense of discovery; for children it offers an adult theme made eminently accessible. Tan’s lovingly laid out and masterfully rendered tale about the immigrant experience is a documentary magically told by way of Surrealism.” – Art Spiegelman

What I think

‘The Arrival’ is the story of an immigrant who leaves his country to build a new future for himself and his family in a new country. It depicts the wonder of a new country and the difficulties and challenges the immigrant faces in becoming a part of it – from learning simple things like how to buy a ticket for using public transport, what are the names of the new vegetables there and how they taste to more complex things like how to navigate the new language, how to find a house for rent, how to find a job, how to get one’s family from one’s home country to one’s adopted country, how to integrate with people from different cultures who are around, how to handle new pets and how to make friends and live a good life. The book doesn’t have any words and text – the whole story is told through pictures. It reminds me of some books I have seen where the story is told through woodcut paintings. In some places Shaun Tan depicts the action beautifully by zooming into a scene or zooming out of a scene – it reminded me of Brian Selznick’s ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ where Selznick uses this technique beautifully. The artwork in the book is extremely beautiful – one of the best that I have seen in a graphic novel. It looks like a lot of care has gone into making each panel and each page. The city from which the main character comes has the shadow of a dragon’s tail hovering in the air – it seemed to indicate a Chinese city. The artwork which depicts the new city is very surrealistic.

Extracts from the book

Here are some pictures from the book which I liked. Hope you enjoy looking at them and hope they inspire you to ‘read’ the book.

Puzzling way of buying a ticket for a strange mode of transport

Trying exotic vegetables

In the old home in the old country

In the new home in the new country

Final Thoughts

Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’ is a classic. Some would say that it takes us back to pre-comic days when there were picture books, without text, which told stories. But I would like to believe that Shaun Tan has taken the graphic-novel medium to a different level – by telling a story with just pictures, without names, without dialogues, without descriptions – and by doing it with really high-quality artwork. ‘The Arrival’ is one of the best graphic novels that I have ever read. It will be one of my treasured possessions (many of my friends are already jealous of me :)) and I will have to thank my dear friend for that. If you like graphic novels, you should definitely try reading ‘The Arrival’. Highly recommended.