Cormorance

by Nick Hayes

Overview

A girl, a boy, and a deserted reservoir. Cormorance is a story of fear, bravery, and the redemptive force of connecting with the natural world. A wordless, purely visual story, it is—like any work by the award-winning Nick Hayes—a book of the utmost beauty, and a wonder to hold in your hand.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910702055
Publisher:	Random House UK
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Edition description:	UK ed.
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 11.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Nick Hayes is the author of The Rime of the Modern Mariner, an updating of Coleridge’s famous poem, and the visual biography Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads. He has also published two collections of his short comics, Lovely Grey Day and 11 Folk Songs. He is the founding editor of Meat magazine, a periodical showcasing new writing, comics, and illustration, and has won two Guardian Media awards.

Editorial Reviews

03/05/2018
Hayes (Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads) meditates on loss and the rituals created around mourning in a book largely silent except for the caws of cormorants. The first chapter follows a boy whose mother has died; overwhelmed by grief and anger, he throws away his photos of her and then begins a trek to retrieve them. The second chapter finds a girl in a similar situation, as she trains to swim a 100-meter race to complete a journey started with her mother. The boy and girl meet up, accidentally, and come to aid each other in their quests, joyously joining in with the birds’ singing when triumphant. The art’s blue wash suggests a constant state of being underwater, mediated only by the accent of pale red-orange swimming gear. Figures consist of looping lines of varying weights, giving them a graceful fluidity. There is an oddly frantic pace despite the melancholic tone of the work; Hayes goes overboard in his page design, unnecessarily cramming as many as 18 panels on a page. Though technically impressive, the work’s simple and resonant themes are overwhelmed by the sheer density of visuals. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"This beautiful book is a reminder that hope can nest in unexpected surroundings." —James Smart, Guardian


"[The] master of the long-form comics . . . This is a picture book of an odd and eerie beauty." —National Geographic Traveler


"[It] makes an eloquent case for what comics can say by refusing to say anything, at least with language . . . Obviously beautiful . . . The story is elegantly expressed by the form . . . I can’t think of many non-graphic novels published this year that match the emotional force and formal deftness of [Cormorance]." —James Kidd, Literary Review


"Fantastic . . . A bereavement for a child must be utterly devastating, confusing and forever haunting, and I think Nick approaches this subject in a very clever and thoughtful way . . . The momentum pulls you through the narrative, leading you to fantastic pull-out spreads of natural wonder." —Matt Sewell, Birdwatch

From the Publisher