Review by Booklist Review
Peeters' autobiographical award winner, Blue Pills (2008), ended with him chatting with a mammoth. The fictional Pachyderme begins in a traffic jam created by an elephant in the middle of the road. Out of the fray walks a stylishly dressed woman en route to her hospitalized husband. Cut to that institution's surgical theater, from which the surgeon, who's also the director, literally dances away from another successful procedure. Even before she reaches the hospital, the woman begins to see things (alien-looking babies) and when she wanders the building there is more: a spy-type capable of emerging from a pipe in the wall and, in the morgue, the reanimated corpse of an old woman who may be herself-to-come. She also encounters the surgeon-director, who comes on to her, and, briefly, her husband. Flashbacks to her just-earlier life, in which she gave up a concert pianist's career for marriage, also feature in Peeters' surreal, dreamlike tale, immaculately rendered in the cinematic realist manner typical of mainstream European comics. What it means exactly is up for grabs, but it has a happy ending.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Her flight to her injured husband's side interrupted by an injured elephant in the road, Carice Sorrel makes her way to the hospital where her husband Pierre -victim of a drunk driver-waits for her. There, guided by her own future corpse, Madame Sorrel has a series of increasingly surreal encounters; corpses talk, spectral babies wander the halls, and hidden truths crawl towards the light. Caught in a dreamlike path that crisscrosses time itself, a confused and frightened Madame Sorrel struggles to understand her true situation; she faces a terrifying transformation but as the aged, dead Madame Sorrel assures herself, what is frightening and tragic from one perspective can be liberating from another. Each element in the story has purpose and meaning, one that invites close examination. Peeters' is the winner of several European comics awards, and his work rises above mere period piece, offering the reader a story of painful growth and introspection. Masterfully translated by Edward Gauvin, Peeters' tale of self-discovery is enthralling; in the author's hands, Cold War paranoia and thoughtfully subverted realist art provides commentary on other kinds of secrets, other kinds of betrayals and the conflict between duty and need. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
