Secret life An adaptation of a story by Jeff VanderMeer

From the cover alone, it's clear Ellsworth's visuals are unique, striking, and surreal. A sense of witnessing something unrecognizable resonates throughout, with bizarrely stylized images of people, beasts, and scenes surrounded by intricate backgrounds that might induce trypophobia in some. And yet, self-taught artist and award-winning graphic creator Ellsworth's adaptation of bestselling VanderMeer's 2004 short story of the same name might prove all too familiar by book's end. A five-story building stands bordered by a forest, shopping mall, fast good outlets, and an empty road into darkness. "The building housed hundreds of people," although what actually happens within seems initially incomprehensible. The floors are segregated; the second floor goes silent. The second and third floors brutally, bloodily colonize the first and fourth floors. The fifth floor is only accessible with a special key. "The custodians in the basement paid no heed." A manager and his pen, night and day janitors, rotting corpses, a woman who can speak to mice, mice who speak English, a weeping mimic--each has an (isolating) story. Corporate culture, capitalism/consumption, social hierarchies, and domination notwithstanding, only a vine flourishes here.

With his meticulously drawn, uncanny comics, Ellsworth (The Understanding Monster) proves a fitting and unnerving match to mine this eerie, parable-like short story by VanderMeer (Hummingbird Salamander). The narrative is presented in brief segments, each centering on various drone-like workers of a Kafkaesque office building. Whatever their respective positions, these denizens seem more like captives than employees, while corporate life is presented as either oppressive or downright sinister. In one story thread, a woman's job consists of the single task of stamping paperwork; in another, the company occupying the lower floors carries a name "never spoken aloud," that "glows a fiery gold when looked upon," causing any reader to flee the building or rapidly ascend its ranks. Meanwhile, a vine that one woman has brought in to beautify her office grows to immense proportions, spreading its leafage everywhere, eventually taking over the structure--as well as the narrative--as humankind, for all its bureaucracy, is no match for the implacable forces of nature. Throughout, Ellsworth's minute crosshatching captures a foreboding, otherworldly atmosphere while imbuing each character, no matter how grotesque, with poignancy. This bizarre, fantastical vision will charm art comics and surrealist lit fans alike. (Sept.)