The Green Hand and Other Stories

by Nicole Claveloux, Donald Nicholson Smith (Translator), Daniel Clowes (Introduction)

Overview

Now in paperback, a collection of “darkly humorous, existential, erotic, trance inducing” (The New York Times) short stories by the lauded French comics artist Nicole Claveloux.

Nicole Claveloux’s short stories—originally published in the late 1970s and never before collected in English—are among the most beautiful comics ever drawn: whimsical, intoxicating, with the freshness and splendor of dreams. In hallucinatory color or elegant black-and-white, she brings us into lands that are strange but oddly recognizable, filled with murderous grandmothers and lonely city dwellers, bad-tempered vegetables and walls that are surprisingly easy to fall through. In the title story, written with Edith Zha, a new houseplant becomes the first step in an epic journey of self-discovery and a witty fable of modern romance—complete with talking shrubbery, a wised-up genie, and one very depressed bird.

This selection, designed and introduced by Daniel Clowes, presents the full achievement of an unforgettable, unjustly neglected master of French comics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681371085
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	11/28/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	45 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Nicole Claveloux has contributed to the French comics magazines Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) and Ah! Nana, and drew a popular comic strip called Grabote. Championed by Harlin Quist, she has also illustrated a number of successful chil- dren’s books, including an award-winning version of Alice in Wonderland. New York Review Comics will be publishing a new collection of her work, Dead Season and Other Stories, in 2022.

Daniel Clowes is a cartoonist, illustrator, and screenwriter. In 1989 he created the influential comic book series Eightball, which includes the celebrated issues Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, Caricature, and Ghostworld. He lives in Oakland, California.

Donald Nicholson-Smith has translated a number of books for both NYRB Classics and New York Review Comics, including Yvan Alagbé’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. Born in Manchester, England, he is a longtime resident of New York City.

Editorial Reviews

…both psychedelic and deeply sober…Darkly humorous, existential, erotic, trance inducing—these comics wield a rare and innovative power…Claveloux's comics encapsulate the desire to change or reinvent oneself—but also to undermine society and the absurd sense of order it imposes. Her characters are often staring out a window or into the distance off the page, beaming out of the panels that contain them. Their facial features change dramatically from one drawing to the next but never disorientingly so—through Claveloux's inconsistencies, each story is imbued with the fluidity of perception…Claveloux takes pleasure in violating the familiar…With a wry sort of joy, Claveloux conveys the spectrum contained in polarities: real and unreal, male and female, animal and human, young and old…The brilliance of her comics lies in what they require of the viewer, to be intimate with what is not known, both within the work and themselves.

The New York Times Book Review - Leopoldine Core

09/04/2017
French artist Claveloux published most of her work for adults in the 1970s in Heavy Metal and other magazines. This is the first time her short stories have been collected in English, and they show an impish sense of humor and fanciful, rounded art style in the vein of Heinz Edelmann and Terry Gilliam. Most of the stories are goofy, hallucinatoy skits, some written by her frequent collaborator Edith Zha, fitfully amusing and disturbing by turns. But while most don’t quite merit the acclaim bestowed on them by Daniel Clowes’s flag-waving introduction (“it arouses feelings that can’t be quantified or explained”), her ardor for Lovecraftian weirdness gets a solid workout in the title piece and the linked stories that follow. Starting as a lightly surreal mood piece about a woman, a plant, and a depressed bird, it starts vaulting through dimensions with alacrity and ends on an unexpectedly romantic note. Cherubic but lethal babies are a recurring theme in other tales, including one that follows a surreal chain of family murders and another about a young princess who suffers when her father remarries. These pages dream furiously. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Darkly humorous, existential, erotic, trance inducing — these comics wield a rare and innovative power....The brilliance of [Claveloux's] comics lies in what they require of the viewer, to be intimate with what is not known, both within the work and themselves." —Leopoldine Core, The New York Times

"Like a time capsule, these 1970s stories by French cartoonist Claveloux—largely untranslated and unseen in the States until this collection—are a reminder of just how outrageous and imaginative comics could be back in that freewheeling decade.... Claveloux’s exquisitely detailed illustrations reflect such contemporary forces as underground comix artists from Robert Crumb to Victor Moscoso, designer Heinz Edelman, and the Day-Glo colors of psychedelic posters.... Her amalgam, though, is a singularly remarkable trip." —Booklist

“Nicole Claveloux’s comics come across as odd, mind-bending 'What If’s.'….The work, certainly, has that air of being created at an inspired moment, with 'The Green Hand' in particular presenting as a little-recognized masterpiece.” —The Comics Journal

"The artwork...is some of the most beautiful ever created for our lowly form—vivid, dreamlike, with intensely vivid hand-separated colors unlike anything I’ve ever seen." —Daniel Clowes

“Claveloux[’s]...explicitly adult pop-art fantasia delivers emotional insight and imaginative visuals that take the driver’s seat away from the strong logic of the narrative and enjoyably amble readers toward the byways of the subconscious with hauntingly powerful designs and sagacious observation.” —Library Journal, starred review

From the Publisher