Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books, 2007.
This oversized graphic novel has gotten quite a few awed reviews, so I had hopes of an unusual reading experience. What it is, basically, is a rather detailed history of every bleeding thing that has ever happened in and around the Northumbrian port town of Sunderland.
It was the eastern anchor of Hadrian’s Wall, so you have the Roman troops. It’s also just down the beach from Lindisfarne, so you have the monastery and the early tradition of learning. And Holy Isle was the first spot in England to be stomped by the Viking raiders, so you have (eventually) the Danelaw. And in more modern times, Sunderland was one of the great ship-building sites in Europe, so you have industry and urban growth and heavy raids during two world wars. It was also the hub of the coal industry, so you have grinding poverty. And you learn the difference between a Mackem and a Geordie, those two great rivals (and not just in football). And especially, you learn all (and I mean all) about a number of people who either came from Sunderland or were closely associated with it, from Jack Crawford, the sailor hero of the Battle of Camperdown, to Sid James, the irritating star of the “Carry On” films, who died on stage at the Empire Theater (which is also sort of the setting for this entire book). But especially, there’s Lewis Carroll, who is usually associated with Oxford but who had deep familial roots in the Sunderland area and who did much of his writing there. The whole Alice mythos, in fact, seems to pop out in all sorts of odd places and in all kinds of personal associations — and Talbot will tell you about every single one of them. And that’s the biggest problem. Unless you hail from Wearmouth, this book is going to become dreadfully tedious in its stultifying level of detail and in its relentlessly lecturing style. I found myself skimming through much of the second half of the volume, slowing down only to enjoy the author’s riffs on Alice and her adventures. This book is a noble effort, but I was ultimately quite disappointed.
