Product Description

The most acclaimed European graphic novel of the last ten years, "Epileptic" is David B.'s story of his brother's battle with epilepsy - but it turns into a penetrating and sometimes lacerating self-examination on the author's part, as he delves into his own complex emotions and his family's troubled history, as well as his own youthful fantasy life. Particularly pointed is his description of the family journey from one attempted cure to another, including acupuncture, spiritualism and macrobiotics. David B.'s drawing is utterly extraordinary, balancing literal representation and expressionist psychological distortion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38294 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Ian Samson, the Guardian
...Epileptic illustrates both the horrible density of reality and the vast possibilities of the human imagination

Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph
a staggeringly original work of real power...astonishing

Tony Gould, Spectator
...bursting with energy and wild imaginings, a comic tour de force that is as emotionally gut-wrenching as it is stunning...

Customer Reviews

I really recommend this book.
I'm surprised that this book has such a small star rating so far. I'm not a big one for writing reviews, in fact this is the first I've written on here, but I think David B deserves a fair crack of the whip.

This is a frank and honest account of growing up, isolation, and a disappearing brother. There's no bull$hit political correctness going on here. Self indulgent? -Maybe so, but why shouldn't he be? All creativity is self indulgent, ..it's his story, he can say what he likes. Stories are good like that.

We mainly object to things that we don't understand, and to see a loved one suffering from something that one can't find an answer to, would, I think make one mad, especially at times with the person in question.
Who knows, maybe I saw something more in it because I have an older brother, and to share a close childhood, and then go seperate ways hurts, whether it's through illness, or whatever. Especially hard I think when it's someone you look upto.

The rich symbolistic imagery in this book is a joy to behold, although sometimes I found the blackness slightly overwhelming, but then again, maybe that's the point. -Although the story itself isn't bleak. Really quite humerous in places.

I've read it twice.

Self indulgent to the extreme
I've always been a big fan of the literary comic book, having lapped up the works of Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes and the finer offerings from Alan Moore. However, I fail to see what the song and dance is all about with this effort by David B.
I will agree, as many reviewers have pointed out, that the raw, woodcut-style artwork is captivating at times; it manages to convey the internal world of our protagonist vividly. However, it seems that David B. was more concerned with showcasing his doodling talents than he was with any semblance of plotting, pace or narrative structure. Despite the book's title, the fact that the writer's brother suffers from epilepsy almost becomes incidental to the author's own navel-gazing; we learn very little about what it is to live in such close proximity to the condition. The sequences in which we're told how his parents enlisted the help of various alternative and new-age practitioners in a bid to cure his brother and heal the family have a tendency towards repetition; every four to five pages we are introduced to a new belief system or medicine, with each exploration fizzling out to be promptly replaced by another. It is this cycle that sustains the book for a large part of its over-long 360 pages.
A very personal work, indeed, but perhaps one so personal that only members of the author's own family need bother themselves with.

Finally, to quote J Wilks (elsewhere on this page); "Self indulgent? -Maybe so, but why shouldn't he be? All creativity is self indulgent, ..it's his story, he can say what he likes. Stories are good like that." Why, thank you, J Wilks! Damning the book with such faint praise has made me feel somewhat vindicated!

Everything In Black & White
A moving, skewed and uncompromising memoir of a comics writer's formative years, drawing violent stories as a vent for his anger at his elder brother's affliction with 'the falling disease'. Humorously scathing of the doctors and alternative therapies their parents sought help from and richly evocative of the energy and concerns of youth, David B also manages to capture the true throughline, imagery and logic of dreams and nightmares. Recommended.