Arne Bellstorf's sad, magically charming graphic novel about the Beatles in Hamburg — when the band's then-bassist Stuart Sutcliffe fell in love with German photographer Astrid Kirchherr — evokes the innocence and romantic hunger of youth with quiet, heart-tugging grace. The period is 1960-62, when the Beatles were playing nightly in a rathole on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's tough red-light district, the crucible in which the band's world-shattering sound was formed. Klaus Voormann, Kirchherr's fellow art student and boyfriend (who later designed the cover of "Revolver"), wanders down to the district one night — not a place he would usually go, being a middle-class lad — and is distracted by the sound of the band wafting up from the Kaiserkeller. He can't wait to drag the reluctant Astrid and other friends to see these Teddy boys with the choirboy voices and rockin' guitars.
The story that follows is well-known. The hip German art students expose the lads to existentialist cool and they swap their Elvis haircuts and leathers for turtlenecks and Parisian-style moptops (but not before Kirchherr snaps some historic photos in all their greaser glory). They get tossed out of the country on visa violations; Sutcliffe quits the band to study art; the boys return, with Paul McCartney switching from guitar to bass; Sutcliffe and Kirchherr get engaged; then Sutcliffe, who has been experiencing severe headaches, suddenly dies of an aneurysm.
Bellstorf tells this fated love story in black-and-white panels conjuring John Lennon's pointed nose and Astrid's doe-eye gaze with caricaturelike lines and punctuating his minimalist cartooning with great swatches of black (Kirchherr's favorite color). There are some great scenes, including Lennon snarling at the (non-English-speaking) crowd, "And don't forget, we won the war"; Kirchherr and Sutcliffe walking in the woods, with the lyrics of "Love Me Tender" scrolling above.
AT A CROSSROADS: BETWEEN A ROCK AND MY PARENTS PLACE BY KATE T. WILLIAMSON
After graduating from college and spending a magical year abroad writing our best-selling A Year in Japan, Kate T. Williamson felt ready for anything. But, like many a postgraduate, she needed some time to figure out just what that anything was. Her parents' house in Pennsylvania seemed like the perfect place for a brief layover, but twenty-three months later, Williamson was still contemplating the past and the future, while explaining to curious neighbors that, at present, her life was "at a crossroads."
At a Crossroads is a unique graphic memoir about the common, yet little-discussed, "boomerang years." With sharp wit and expressive drawings, Williamson illustrates the joys, disappointments, comforts, and embarrassments of life back home with mom and dad. Highlights and low points include celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday at a Hall & Oatesconcert with her mother; noticing the train sounds from her bedroom for the first time; battling an infestation of squirrels;discovering that the ballet class she has signed up for is actually for children, and attending anyway; getting mail fromher college crush, who has developed an interest in taxidermy; wearing a chain-mail belt of her own creation to her cousin'sRenaissance-themed wedding. Moving from season to season, Williamson uses her delightful illustrations and vivid descriptions to discover the beauty and truth inside every hilarious episode. At a Crossroads is a book for young and old alike, or for anyone contemplating the little things worth noting in the times of our lives we often erase from our histories.
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