Review: Amazing Grapes

By Jules Feiffer

New York: Michael di Capua Books, HarperCollins Publishers, 2024. Comics.

If you're looking for a truly unique graphic novel, here it is! When Shirley, Pearly, and Curly's father walks out on them, their dreamy, distracted mother announces she is taking them away to live in a new house with a new family. Instead, a giant two-headed swan brings the bickering Pearly and Curly to the Lost Dimension of Ephemera. Here they wander in spaces both nonsensical and allegorical, meeting strange characters who often move fluidly between being friend or a foe.

Amazing Grapes has some hilarious writing and impeccable comedic timing, embodied by Feiffer's scratchy, colorful art and handwritten text. Underneath the wackiness is an exploration of abandonment, anxiety, and existential uncertainty. It's cheeky, poignant, and strange, a good fit for anyone interested in Alice in Wonderland, Spirited Away, or The Phantom Tollbooth (which Feiffer himself illustrated in 1961).

Jules Feiffer was a Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist who passed away on January 17 of this year at the age of 95.

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