Review by C.J. Bunce
In the tradition of The Arabian Nights and Labyrinth comes the immersive fantasy graphic novel The Book of Murmurs (available now here at Amazon), a swirling, whirling journey of personal discovery, as a little girl must learn her way to live without a family while she carefully assembles clues from her past and takes guidance from others to move forward away from fear. Writer-artist Candice Purwin conjures a personal watercolor journey of magic, faeries, and fairy tale with Tolkien-inspired elements combined as a sort of Aesop’s Fables, each chapter a new tale from a new perspective and differing colors, spliced with flashbacks, all as part of a labyrinthine quest to discover self as the girl sees it and as others expect her to be seen. It’s not an easy journey, requiring the reader to discard their own preconceptions, floating along with the girl as she assembles her own yellow brick road-wide flank of helpers, some of which are more helpful than others, but are all part of her learning. It begins with a stolen name and a book of answers that would have helped her had a librarian not have conned her out of it.
The assemblage of different designed chapters calls back to The Arabian Nights, only this journey does not have a narrator or clearly delineated storyteller, requiring the reader to dig into the narrative and the illustrated panels more than you might in a typical fantasy tale. And those panels reflect a daunting volume of work on the artist’s part–where some pages offer the typical design of a comic book page, others feature tiny panels barely larger than an inch, each filled with the content you might find on a full page in another book. So this hefty 262-page book contains much more content than it may seem. Bigger on the inside?
The answers may not be clear, but the lessons are many, like “While protecting things might help them survive, they do not thrive. We must eventually go out into the worlds!” Or even better, “You never have to be afraid if you are the most frightening thing in the house.”
At first blush the story seems to be all contained in a book of magic, a secret book rediscovered by the girl’s mother, whose term of endearment for her is Little Moon. When the girl reads a monster story she is warned against, she awakens to find her family killed and her name, revealed only at story’s end, stolen. A pair of crones across the street set her on her way–she is in search of a Shenk, one of many monsters she will encounter.
The girl is drawn Brown, and where the mythology told is a completely new mix of inspiration from tales that bridge cultures, the vibe takes on a Native American flare more often than not, and ultimately her stolen name, eventually reclaimed, is an Arabic word meaning “arising” or “ascending.”
With each chapter its own fable embedded in magic and make-believe, the first non-linear tale readers will encounter reveals the backstory of one of the journey’s key antagonists, depicted in black and white. Themes include the value of histories passed along via oral tradition, represented by a cavern left by lost stories that may never be reclaimed. Intriguing creations include the Undertow, a metaphor for the girl’s inability to control her own narrative. The author’s fantasy realm is contained in a magic-tinged Middle Earth called The Fault. Often suffocating, creating a delirium that will be familiar to fans of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth while also similar to the fall in Alice in Wonderland, the road to the end does not lead to a happily ever after. This journey is more steeped in the harsh realities of adult life.
It’s an ambitious, daunting creation and a daunting read. A challenge for even the most voracious reader of complex fantasy worlds, requiring attention to every corner and often re-reading the last few pages, this will be a rewarding new world for its audience who will get more from it based on what they bring to it. For fans of Labyrinth looking to move a step into darker, murkier territory, and fans of Miranda Mundt’s Muted series looking for something heftier and more daunting, The Book of Murmurs is available through Elite Comics, your local comic shop and here at Amazon from publisher Fantagraphics.
