Editorial Grafito is publishing this comic in Spanish, which writer Eider Rodriguez adapted his literary universe with the help of Julen Ribas.
Facing the evolving cinematic fashion based on childhood memories to idealize family backgrounds – with examples like Rome (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018), Belfast (Kenneth Branagh, 2021) or it was the hand of god (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021)-, there is a marvelous literary tradition prevailing especially from the second half of the 20th century, which sometimes prefers to explore the cracks of boring families and possibly exemplary characters in order to avoid the scum that is found. revealing beneath the pristine surface.
Basque writer Eider Rodriguez, like famous pioneers like Raymond Carver or Richard Ford, uses his family and traditions as an inexhaustible source of inspiration. which he uses to talk about tangential aspects such as relationships, generational division, and emotional struggles for domination; thematic rules often found in story compilations a heart is too bigand also the backbone of the script. holy family, in collaboration with cartoonist Julen Ribas, premiered in comic book format. The study was first published in the journal issues. xabiroi, It has already won the 2018 Euskadi Literary Award in the category of Children’s and Teenage Literature and is now available in Spanish by Grafito Editorial.
Rodríguez takes time to head (untie) (dissolve) the three corners of the imperfect triangle that make up the Holy Family. Anne Sorkunde tries to resist the passage of time, blowing out the fortieth birthday candles forever and smelling any change that threatens what she sees as the natural order of events. Father Teodoro also seems to be stuck in time, stretching a post-adolescent period that allows him to avoid adult conflict in this case. Both married without falling in love to fill a life void they were trying to fill with the furniture of their family home, a pet, and a daughter.
in the first half holy family considerable part of lifeCaptured in Ribas’ evocative watercolors with warm tones and impressive close-ups.s – example of the spectrum of emotions that the cartoonist has managed to capture, from the purest fear to bewilderment, rich in destructive naturalistic reflections on human relationships: difficulty accepting one’s own and others’ faults, emotional dependence, or the music of these accusations. it embeds all kinds of constructive dialogue possibilities in many couples. Those familiar with Rodríguez’s previous work will also find recognizable elements of his rich descriptions, such as references to diseases or the presence of animals that represent to the author everything that cannot be expressed in purely verbal language.
holy family The thematic and formal direction changes when the couple’s daughter Nora (meaning in Basque) enters the scene, as an adolescent paralyzed by doubts and fears.Not knowing whether to continue swimming to the safety of the pool or jumping into the open sea, Rodriguez uses it to introduce the second central theme of the piece: adolescence and the impossibility of reconnecting with children at this complex stage of life. In the case of Sorkunde this is somatized to the point of being directly ill.
After investigating family dynamics and uncovering their secrets, Rodriguez uses the Nora figure to blow up the story. The confession of a secret—metaphysical or figurative, selectable—to his parents adds a fantastic element to the hitherto realistic fiction.forces the reader to rethink what they are reading and the protagonists to face an inevitable change that they always pursue if they were left to a vital inertia. This unexpected change of tone of the second half holy family it also influences Ribas’ creations, which have become more expressive, dynamic and evocative.
paradoxical, This narrative explosion serves to lighten the tone of the work and replicate the hitherto secretly spiced elements of humor.† This animal portrayal of classical and modern fathers and mothers, which cuts through the story and which Rodriguez and Ribas have used to examine the various father and mother profiles of recent years, with surgical precision and a high dose of mordacity, is particularly ludicrous. Ways to understand parenting and relationships with children.
when the characters holy family reaching the end of their emotional journey, already completely transformed, the reader may regret that a continuation of this family saga was not planned that would allow them to follow the adventures of these contradictory, flawed and fascinating characters.
If you’d like to learn more about the work of the in-house authors, we recommend that you read our interview from the Danger Room by clicking this link.†
