According to her publisher, Karrie Fransman lives in London, in a house "not dissimilar" from the one she depicts in The House That Groaned. If this is true, she should talk to her landlord. For the Victorian tenement of her slate pages Fransman works in noir-ish shades of grey-green is decaying from the inside out, its clanking pipes and sighing walls keeping its newest tenant, a sweet-natured makeup artist called Barbara, wide awake long into the night. And then there are the other occupants. Man, they're weird.
Across the landing is Matt, a professional retoucher (of photographic models), who is compelled to wear gloves whenever he comes into contact with a real human being. Downstairs is Janet, the tormented leader of a slimming group, for whom life is simply one long struggle to avoid eating carbohydrates, and Brian, whose sexual compulsion is for the sick and the physically vulnerable (cancer patients, anorexics, the morbidly obese). Finally, upstairs, we have Marion, fat and growing ever fatter, a hedonist who runs the mysterious Midnight Feast Front from her increasingly sordid bedroom, and Mrs Durbach, a lonely old lady who literally might as well be a part of the furniture for all that anyone takes any notice of her. Brilliantly, Fransman draws Mrs Durbach folded inside bookcases, or wearing a dress whose print so exactly matches that of her cushion covers, you cannot tell the two apart. Only the sound of her voice alerts the visitor to her whereabouts.
In a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy its author allows the peculiar inhabitants of 141 Rottin Road to meet, and even to fall in love 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 a cardboard wall will relish the way she lets her imagination off its leash. But it also warns that loneliness and isolation have serious consequences. What starts as a quirk or a tic quickly becomes a full-blown psychosis, left unchecked behind closed doors.
Fransman uses flashback to devastating effect. Mostly, the destinies of her apple-cheeked characters her faces are all circles turn on a single, humiliating moment. But this isn't to say that The House That Groaned is unremittingly dark. It's often funny. I laughed when Janet appeared in her jogging gear (she looks like a very haggard Jane Fonda), and I'm afraid I sniggered at Brian, too (as he holds a flyer for the Supporters of Women With Facial Disfigurement, the thought bubble above his head reads: "Supporter? I'm a downright fan!"). And even when it's at its blackest, it's always beautiful-looking. What a cover. Open it, and you realise that the windows adorning it have been cut out so as to allow colour from a single page of yellow-green drawings behind it they're the colour of a cat's eyes to "shine" through. The effect is eerie and apt. The book might almost be alive.
Karrie Fransman will be appearing at BD & Comics Passion at the Institut Français, London, 24-27 May.
