Review
ALEXANDRIA
Written and illustrated by Nick Bantock
Raincoast Books
Usually it’s a reviewer’s job to inform readers what a book is about, but when the book in question is by Nick Bantock, entire Web sites exist to debate the subject – and chances are the author himself is still figuring it out.
"…Some revelation is at hand" begins this second book of the Morning Star trilogy – quoting directly from stanza two of W.B. Yeats’s poem "The Second Coming." This is the poem that inspired Bantock to create the first Griffin & Sabine stories 11 years ago. Bantock thought the stories were finished, yet new insights and experiences urged him, 10 years later, to seek a deeper understanding of Griffin Moss and Sabine Strohem’s relationship and their labyrinthine world of myth and reality.
You don’t have to read these books in sequence to appreciate them. Like the other Griffin & Sabine books, Alexandria is a fairy tale, love story and pop-up book for adults. Its surface story is the correspondence between long-distance lovers Matthew Sedon and Isabella de Reims, complete with postmarked cards (Isabella writes by hand; Matthew types), pencil sketches and spelling mistakes. In Alexandria, Egypt, mysterious forces keep Matthew away from his archeological dig. He is poised on the brink of an important discovery that may explain his strange and powerful connection with Sabine. Isabella is a student doing research in Paris. With Griffin’s guidance, she sidesteps danger and learns to trust her deepest instincts.
Beneath this already compelling surface, myth and reality merge. Bantock plays with dichotomies of sun/moon, waking/dreaming, male/female, human/animal and overworld/underworld. His narrative relies equally upon words and images to convey meaning.
"Am I meant to go backward or forward?" Isabella asks Griffin, trying to decipher the meaning of her dream.
"Have you considered travelling both ways at once?" Griffin replies.
Alexandria continues Bantock’s aim to create a new consciousness, or perhaps restore a former one, that allows us to accept and live with our differences instead of choosing one thing to the exclusion of the other.
"In each of us there are two worlds – the practical and the mythological," Sabine reminds Matthew. "It is so easy to narrow one’s view to the practical and lose sight of that second world where the celestials dwell and love is conceived."
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