When David Lost His Voice
Middle-aged David develops esophageal cancer, and the members of his family do their best to cope with their impending loss. Vanistendael’s beautifully watercolored images depict how his artist wife copes both through her imagination and by using frames from his radiograms in her art; how his younger daughter, a sweet nine-year-old, faces him and asks clearly about his pain and the ramifications of death; and how his much older daughter (by a different mother no longer on the scene) shares her energy and her own newborn with him and the rest of his family. Each chapter is offset with a stanza of poetry that sets the tone for the specific character at its center, while pages unfold in a variety of patterns, from small, tidy panels to filmlike reels across the centerfold to full-page spreads of accessible and stirring imagery. David’s last voyage upon the sea of an accepted death is both beautiful and life affirming. Neither sentimental nor cynical, this narrative holds the most delicate aspects of family life gently and openly for readers to immerse themselves. --Francisca Goldsmith