Read This: Resistance, Book 1

I confess to a lack of objectivity when it comes to Resistance, Book 1, as the artist on the graphic novel, Leland Purvis, is a good friend. But I would have been impressed with this story even without that personal connection—you know how Alan Furst has, in novel after novel, crafted masterful dramas out of the years leading up to the Second World War and the early phases of the conflict, before the United States joined the fray? Carla Jablonski is working the same territory here, and like Furst, she understands that covert operations usually isn’t a sleek or glamorous field, but a series of small actions performed by ordinary people—in this story, even the children of the Tessier family are drawn into the underground movement against the occupying German forces.

Leland uses young Paul’s sketchbook as an effective tool for conveying many of the story’s emotional subtexts, but his compositions also underscore the tensions of the Tessier childrens’ big mission, reminding the reader that it isn’t an adventure but a matter of life and death. Resistance is the first volume in a trilogy; I’m very much looking forward to seeing where the story goes in subsequent volumes, whether Jablonski stays with the Tessiers or shifts focus to other members of the resistance movement.

8 March 2010 | read this |