Days of Sand

I don’t read enough graphic novels to be able to offer an informed opinion about them, but I liked this book a lot. The story – about a young man photographing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s – moves along at a good, brisk clip. Almost every character makes an impression. And then, of course, there are the illustrations. Not just carefully detailed to reflect the times they’re describing, they also practically radiate the heat afflicting the drought-ridden plains. You can feel the itching, ever-present dust that clogs everything it encounters. It’s almost tactile.

If I’ve got one quibble, it’s the author's attitude to the photographs her young protagonist takes. He comes to see them as worthless in the face of the suffering he’s documenting. But without those photographs – the ones taken by real photographers during the Great Depression – we wouldn’t know today what we do know. And Aimee de Jongh wouldn’t have had a book to write.

I don’t know. Perhaps I’m missing something. Whatever the case, I think this is a fine piece of work. And it deserves every one of the accolades it’s currently piling up.

(On a tiny personal note, I read this in the original Dutch. That’s a first for me, a book in another language.)