They say the best things come in small boxes. I just think, the best things come in boxes. Take, for example, Chris Ware’s new graphic novel, Building Stories.
Included in the New York Times list of the best books of 2012, this novel is actually a box full of little books and pamphlets that can be read in any order. They all tell the story of a Chicago house–the residents that live there, the bee that pollinates its flowers, the house itself, and the lives that have begun and ended there.
This is a comic for the existentialist.
Chris Ware’s illustrations are simple (maybe you saw them in the NYTimes book review a couple months ago) and have been described as “potatoes with legs” but they are strikingly descriptive. Plus, let me again remind you, it’s a box (think Monopoly gameboard size) full of intricately designed books–the construction of the book alone is a work of art.
Building Stories by Chris Ware, Pantheon Books, 2012
Comments are closed.