Misery of Love

The pervasive effects of French colonialism and family betrayal hover over a funeral gathering in Paris, in this lacerating standalone companion to Alagbé’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. Claire—blonde, slight, willful—faces her estranged father as her family comes together to bury her grandparents (one of Alagbé’s earlier stories suggests there was a double suicide). Glimpses of Claire’s brooding ruminations reveal the bitter history behind the hostile reunion. Though Claire’s interracial marriage to Alain (an immigrant artist “sans-papiers”) emerges as a focal point of friction, corrosion set in long before. The family fortune, such as it is, traces back to a brothel Claire’s grandparents operated in an immigrant quarter—the setting for a series of searing childhood memories. In Alain, Claire finds an escape from inheritances both pecuniary and psychic, and Alagbé depicts their lovemaking in sensuous, frank detail—yet the legacy of colonialist exploitation skulks ever nearer. Revelations remain tauntingly ambiguous, uncertainties are left suspended in midair. Alagbé shrouds his murky ink wash art in purposeful obscurity, with spectral human forms blurring into near-abstract compositions, like Gerhard Richter photo-paintings by way of Hugo Pratt. In haunted ellipses, Alagbé conjures an almost tactile sense of disquiet that isn’t easily shaken. It’s a stunning graphic novel counterpart to the obsessive fever dreams of Marguerite Duras and Claire Denis. (July)