Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Our childhood memories are made of the real and the imagined and quite often the lines of both worlds are blurred, become merged with each other, what we believe we may have experienced, what we may have seen, is something we may be told later by well-meaning relatives, that didn’t happen, or imagination out-ran our senses. That the snarling Wolf we followed one day through a thick and unnerving forest, was in actual fact a small puppy caught in the brambles and small thicket that was on the other side of the fence, just a few feet from the bottom of the garden.
The imagination of the child is perhaps the most fluid aspect, the most resilient part of the psyche of any child, it allows the terrible loss of a parent to be dealt with in a way that would floor any adult suffering the same bereavement, the sense of guilt is reasoned with a sense of industry and is given to forming friendships that others may think is unhealthy, but instead is only a gateway to seeing through the stages of grief with honesty and embracing unhappiness with a sense of direction, of fire.
It is in the imagination of Rachael Ball that the Wolf exists and guides the young Hugo, a fleeting glimpse of the animal catches his attention and in the space of 24 hours his world is turned upside down, the loss hitting the family hard. In an almost homage to the great Raymond Briggs, this particular graphic novel becomes a rite of passage, the acceptance of Time and the strangers we meet when we confide with the entity, the risks taken and the very human actions that are detailed in a polished artistic observation. Rachael Ball captures these ranges of emotions with the same succinctness, almost every-day awareness that Mr. Briggs brought to all his own pieces of art.
What we seek out as children is comfort, reassurance, we believe, and trust, in those that tell us that the neighbours are witches, that the thin, grey-skinned looking man across the road is a monster, and we confide in our siblings that our parents will be around forever. Illusions are always shattered eventually, the only thing we can trust in the end is that the Wolf will keep us away from ever growing embittered and alienated from the world; it is a world, a delight, in which Rachael Ball has excelled in creating in this new graphic novel release from Selfmadehero.
Rachael Ball’s Wolf is released via SelfMadeHero on October 18th.
Ian D. Hall