Recently my daughter dropped into my studio and looked over my shoulder at the illustration I was working on. I took a break to give her a brief tutorial on the artwork on my drawing board.It was a detailed depiction of a robot with cross-hatched rocket launchers, carefully outlined machine guns and a ridiculously detailed array of cogs, dials and assorted inner workings, all weathered and rusted in sepia ink and watercolour. The whole thing had taken me ages. Katy eyed my creation for a moment then turned to me and said, "Honestly, Dad, I don't know how you can be bothered."
Brian Selznick's last book, the celebrated The Invention of Hugo Cabret, sold in impressive numbers, but I admit to picking up this brick of a book in bookshops across America and admiring its heft before placing it back on the shelves unopened. I was on an increasingly quixotic book tour as the world financial system collapsed and was suffering an acute bout of author envy.
So it was with a cynical and steely eye that would have done my daughter proud, that I opened my review copy of Wonderstruck and prepared myself to be anything but. It was a difficult task. Everything about this book begs you to love it. The printing and design are gorgeous, the paper of the highest quality, and the heft of the book, a Selznick trademark, would shame a Russian novel. No expense has been spared, and not just in the design. Several Minnesotan forests have been sacrificed to furnish an initial print run of half a million copies. I gulped back my rising envy and began to read.
The opening sequence of pages is stunning. Wolves bound towards the reader out of dark snowy wastes, culminating in an extreme close up of a wolf's eye. It is a visual tour de force, part stop frame animation, part picture book. This technique is at the heart of the book, and, take it from me, this book has heart. Selznick's style as an illustrator is a cross between LS Lowry and Maurice Sendak, a mixture of the touchingly naive and the closely observed, rendered in luminous pencil shading. It is ideal for the novel's frequent twists and turns and the numerous lyrical high points which culminate in the cinematic close ups of which Selznick is so fond. By comparison with the flowing visual sequences, the writing feels a little flat.
The story of Ben, a young boy in 1970s Minnesota who runs away to New York in search of his father, is told in prose, while an accompanying narrative of a deaf girl in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1923, is conveyed entirely visually. Ben is living with his uncle's family after the death of his mother in a car accident. Going through his mother's effects, he discovers a book entitled Wonderstruck, a history of museums from the early cabinets of delights to the great institutions of the present day. The book has been dedicated "to Danny from M", and has a bookmark from a New York bookstore in its pages. This sets Ben off on a journey of discovery. Interwoven with Ben's story is the visual narrative of the girl who, like Ben, runs away to New York.
The two stories come together at the climax of the book, which manages to incorporate an impressive array of heartfelt issues: everything from education for the deaf to friendship, love of collecting, conservation, memories and dioramas. As I turned the pages my heart was well and truly warmed in that way beloved of a certain type of American children's literature earnest, life affirming, educational, and impossible to dislike. Reaching the end I leafed back through the 460 pages of Wonderstruck, admiring the pictures, all thoughts of my daughter now banished. Honestly, Brian, I do know how you can be bothered.
Chris Riddell's Ottoline at Sea is published by Macmillan.
