The English seaside is a strange place, mixing tackiness and beauty, commerce and nostalgia; somewhere you go to for sunshine but often find a grey, spitting sky. David Hughes’s second graphic novel uses it as the setting for a brilliantly drawn, unsettling tale that is part childhood adventure, part harrowing tale of abuse and injustice. The child left to his own devices on a summer holiday is a common feature of escapist fiction, and here young protagonist Jack uses his family’s regular trip to run free with his dog, annoy adults, build sandcastles and make discoveries. First, he sees a woolly mammoth round a bend in the headland, then he finds a second world war pillbox and a boy called Keith who snares rabbits and listens to Lead Belly. The story that emerges feels both shocking and half-formed, but looks brilliant. Hughes mixes crabbed faces, work-in-progress sketches and expansive sketches of beach, lines of sea and sand dwarfing his characters. At times abstract and experimental, at others brutal and immediate, this is an odd and fascinating book.
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