Tag Archives: writer: Patrick Weber

Sourire 58, by Patrick Weber and Baudouin Deville

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Monique, if you get off to a bad start…

Next in the series by Weber and Deville about Kathleen, a young Belgian woman coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s. Here she is recruited by the organisers of the famous Brussels Expo of 1958, with the Atomium in pride of place, and rapidly becomes entangled in a Cold War plot – not that dissimilar to Jonathan Coe’s Expo 58, which makes one feel that there must have been a lot of it going on. Lots of attention to historical detail (including the sexism directed at Kathleen), and successfully conveying the sense that this was an event which Belgium hoped would boost the entire country’s confidence after the war years, seen from the perspective of someone who was there. I’m enjoying this run. You can get Sourire 58 here.

This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next on that pile is Ces lignes qui tracent mon corps, by Mansoureh Kamari.

Bruxelles 43, by Patrick Weber and Baudouin Deville

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The first of a recent series of six graphic novels by Weber and Deville, set in Belgium in the mid-twentieth century (later years are 1958, 1960, 1961, 1965 and 1968).

The framing narrative has the central character, Kathleen, cleaning up her mother’s house in 1960, and coming across souvenirs of the war years seventeen years earlier – the same distance that separates us from 2009. We are then plunged into an intense narrative of resistance to German occupation, mostly from a schoolgirl’s point of view, with a lot of real life events and people woven into the fiction. The climax is the publication of the “Faux Soir” on 7 November 1943.

Fiction based around historical personalities and events, whether on the screen or on the page, often falls into the trap of doing it by the numbers. I felt that Bruxelles 43 avoided that; we readers of course know that the occupation will not last for much longer, and that Belgium will pick itself up again, but the characters don’t. It’s also very neat that comics themselves as a medium are woven into the story – Hergé is one of the many historical characters to make an appearance, and there’s a sensitive exploration of the role of culture in general in an occupied society.

This is a good start to the series. Next in the sequence is Sourire 58, by the same creative team. You can get Bruxelles 43 here.

Spa 1906, by Patrick Weber and Olivier Wozniak

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This is the middle volume of a planned trilogy about early twentieth century Belgian detective Hendrikus Ansor, who Solves Crime. In this case he is brought in by Princess Clémentine (I wasn’t sure if she was a real historical person, but she was) to investigate mysterious deaths – apparently suicides – in the eastern resort town of Spa, which has given its name to an entire way of life.

Ansor obviously owes something to a later fictional Belgian detective, not least his magnificent moustache, but he’s a well-rounded if not always likeable character here, and the classical buildings of Spa and the royals and other celebrities are lovingly depicted by artist Olivier Wozniak. The mood of the book depicts a Belgium morally corroded by the reign of Leopold II rather well. I found the plot a bit convoluted, but I suppose that’s normal enough for a detective novel. It’s a nice one to have on the shelf. You can get Spa 1906 here.