Craig Thompson’s Blankets is the most moving graphic novel I’ve ever read and one of the strongest stories of any medium I’ve been lucky enough to experience. When I bought his first book, Good-Bye Chunky Rice on Thursday I had rather high expectations but opened the cover knowing it had the potential to be a lesser, quite different book.
Good-Bye Chunky Rice turned out to be a wonderful exploration of being far from the people we love, though in a quite different way from Blankets. Chunky Rice is a small turtle who has followed wanderlust onto a sea journey that takes him away from his love Dandel, a mouse. On his way to the ship he’ll travel on and once on aboard it, Chunky encounters other characters feeling the loss of and distance from people they love, each possessing a sense of sorrow and a complex personal struggle. Soloman, a roommate of Chunky and brother of the ship’s captain, for instance had a harsh childhood and seeks a relationship he lost with his brother as well as any sort of friendship he can find.
The art of this story is quite cartoon-like, at times sweetly tender and at others jarring and stark. Dialogue is minimal within these pages but there’s no sense of it being lacking because the illustrations are rich with emotion and narrative motion. Through coincidence or plan, the pair most in love, Chunky and Dandel, are also the most beautiful and tenderly rendered. Dandel’s release of bottle messages for Chunky provide the most moving moments in the story, in part because of her fragile appearance and large, glossy eyes.
Good-Bye Chunky Rice isn’t Blankets, but few stories can hold that kind of magic. This is still a wonderful story in its own right, full of the wonder of fables and the emotional impact that graphic novels, being the hybrids they are, can impart. If you’re far away from a dear friend or anyone else you love, this book will touch you.