Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The art of the surreal is to draw attention to the sense of the off balance that we feel when we stop to look at the world from a position of standing still, to make us do more than think, but to accept that all we may have put faith in may be wrong, that we have forgotten to stop blindly accepting, that we don’t know how to communicate with someone with different ideas without starting a fight; to consent to the fantastic and weird is the best possible course of action that humanity can do.

To take the next step in the surreal surely drives you down a rabbit hole that even Alice could not fall down, unless Tweedledee and Tweedledum had gone first and widen the scope of human understanding and acceptance further.

Following on from the superb The Motherless Oven would have been a great ask for any author, to make it seem as if you have read the back story of one of the great female protagonists of graphic novel literature, one whose very existence depends on fighting back against the acceptance of the surreal as a normal attitude, then the reader will understand that they too have followed Alice down the hole and into a world where the utensil and the clock hold court, where human life is in turn deemed having a pre-determined life span, and which The Can Opener’s Daughter is one of the great rebels of our time.

Rob Davis explores the teenager’s life in the follow up to The Motherless Oven with a deft unrepentant hand, scathing in its surreal tone, brutal in its dynamic, but as caring as an artist when finding beauty in someone’s soul that they want to open up for all to reflect in, to be inspired in the revolution that we wish to see explode like fireworks in the blackening sky.

Not only does Rob Davis give life to Vera Pike, but he gives her depth of emotion, and like the two other heroes of the series, Scarper Lee and Castro Smith, the adventure they find themselves in is one which is complex, otherworldly and in tune with the times we live in, the need for our name to be remembered and not replaced by someone else interpretation, the uniqueness of our own story to be celebrated, and the constant fight, to rebel against a machine that would damn us at every move.

The sequel can flounder when placed against a ground-breaking debut, but for Rob Davis, The Can Opener’s Daughter is one that is utterly and dynamically, sensational. An epic in every sense of the word.

Rob Davis’ The Can Opener’s Daughter is published by SelfMadeHero.

Ian D. Hall