Oracles
Stricken with grief and fed up with “ink-laced pleasantries,” a bereft daughter takes to the trail, her ultimate destination uncertain, in Olivia Sullivan’s moving graphic novel Oracles.
Having lost her mother and flailed at her first knee-jerk response, a woman sets out on a quest with an unspoken goal. Her path, which is strewn with things that remind her of what she’s lost, is not an easy or predictable one. She hallucinates; she maybe encounters a cryptid guru, and maybe engages in a tea ceremony atop a prayer flag-flying peak. There are the thoughts of the sea, of a watery vortex, and of “celestial hope. Tasty galaxies of milky ways.” Always, though, there is the shuddering return of her lonely reality.
Evasion and escape guide the woman, who dreams of constructing a self-sustaining homestead in the wilds, away from the world. These dreams are built on the surfaces of soap bubbles, though, and do pop: “I thought wandering would bring fresh clarity,” she laments. “It does not.” When she focuses on what’s truly before her, though––and on the treasures in her memories—she does find cause to rest.
The book’s language is lyrical and obscure, navigating the discombobulation of losing someone beloved with pained curiosity. And the sepia-toned illustrations are semicrude and associative—with the occasional exception of landscapes, where their details become more clear and evocative. Indeed, the images trade between surreal and tactile, natural foci well, from the items that the seeker puts in her pack to the branches that she imagines sprouting from her skin. She is seen floating on bubbles in her mind, reaching for transcendence; she is followed as she battles the elements alone. Most poignant are the frames in which her mother reappears.
About impermanence and the gift of memory, Oracles is a powerful graphic novel that follows a woman’s process of grief and recovery.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
