The Interview

by Manuele Fior

Overview

In this graphic novel, a psychiatrist’s marriage falls apart, alien spacecraft hover in the sky, and his patient claims she can telepathically communicate with them.

This graphic novel is set in Italy in 2048. Raniero is a fifty-something psychologist whose marriage is failing. In the sky, strange bright triangles appear, bearing mysterious messages from an extraterrestrial civilization. Dora, his young patient, is part of the "New" Convention, a movement of young people preaching free love and alternative models to coupling and family. She declares that her telepathic abilities can parse the signal — a warning of some kind. Initially skeptical, Raniero’s curiosity and attraction grows. The Interview is a science fiction novel that eschews the stars in favor of the delicate, fragile, interior world of human emotion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781606999868
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	04/11/2017
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Manuele Fior was born in Cesena (Italy) in 1975 and currently lives in Venice. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Le Monde, and La Republica.

Editorial Reviews

06/05/2017
Science fiction elements meet the quotidian in this moody look at a psychologist and his patient. The year is 2048, and Raniero, despite his successful career and marriage, is feeling his age. Enter Dora: beautiful, spirited, and apparently prone to hallucinations of bright, strange triangles in the sky. But Raniero has seen the triangles as well—and they herald a new age of humankind that neither her youth nor his experience can fully anticipate. Fior (5,000 KM per Second) is an utterly unparalleled artist, a master alike of sharp delineation and smudged, suggestive charcoal. Dora is a particularly impressive creation—lovely but alien, with wide, preternatural eyes that imply sight far beyond the mundanity of Raniero’s world. And this is, indeed, a far-seeing book that probes the depths of human existence as fully as it does a single, staggering marriage. It relies too much, however, on certain tired tropes—for example, the hangdog, 50-something man enlivened by the intriguing young sylph. Still, this is a meditative look at humanity coping with change. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Through his narrative restraint and graphic acuity, Fior makes the experiences of a single man seem as important as the fate of mankind."

Booklist

04/01/2017
Driving home one night in the near future, Italian psychologist Raniero encounters a strange, flashing geometrical light in the sky. The next day, he's assigned a new patient, Dora, a young woman said to be suffering from hallucinations who claims to have seen the same apparition, giving her psychic powers. Raniero insists that nothing supernatural is afoot, but as he's drawn closer to his patient and more inexplicable activity occurs, he's forced to reckon with the idea that the world as he knows it may be on the verge of transformation. Fior (5,000 km per second) takes what initially seems like the perfect premise for a sweeping sf epic and instead presents a relatively quiet tale about the complexities of love and trust in a rapidly changing world, delivered with graceful illustration and melancholy washes of black and gray. VERDICT Readers who like their sf a bit more bombastic might be disappointed, but those interested in examinations of the heart set against a backdrop of the fantastic are sure to embrace this story.—TB

Library Journal