Description
Book SynopsisThe House That Groaned is a graphic novel that explores bodies and the spaces they inhabit.
It is set in an old Victorian tenement housing six lonely individuals who could only have stepped out of the pages of a comic book. There is the retoucher who cannot touch, a grandmother who literally blends into the background and a twenty-something bloke who''s sexually attracted to diseased women.
Yet, as we learn the stories behind these extreme characters, it becomes apparent that we may share simlar issues - as individuals and as a society.
Trade ReviewIn a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy…and a cautionary tale. Anyone who has ever lain in bed at night listening to the sound of unknown voices on the other side of the cardboard wall will relish the way she lets her imagination off its leash…funny…beautiful looking…this book might almost be alive -- Rachel Cooke * Observer, Graphic Novel of the Month *
An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade -- James Smart * Guardian *
A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive * ForbiddenPlanet.co.uk *
Karrie Fransmen breaks all the rules of storytelling accumulated over the past thousands of years. She creates a confusion at first, then bursts into the obvious and simplest fact; that all the stories of and in our lives are personal and private.... The only way this wonderful book could have been written is by illustration...not by word... rather like the hidden stories drawn on the walls of caves -- Nicolas Roeg, director of Don't Look Now and Walkabout
Fransman's dual background as a psychology and sociology student and a creative advertiser helps underpin her skills at both characterisation and communication… By its melodramatic finales,
The House That Groaned acknowledges some scars that miss their chance to heal, but also gives us a kind of happy ending for two tenants -- Paul Gravett * Independent *
