Product Description

The most acclaimed European graphic novel of the last ten years is finally published in English. The most acclaimed European graphic novel of the 1990s, Epileptic is author David B.'s story of his brother's battle with epilepsy—but it turns into a penetrating and sometimes lacerating self-examination on the author's part, as he delves into his own complex emotions and his family's troubled history, as well as his own youthful fantasy life. Particularly pointed is his description of the family's journey from one attempted cure to another (including acupuncture, spiritualism, and macrobiotic diet), the book is drawn in David B.'s spare but detailed, straightforward but elegant style. We would have called this A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius if it hadn't been taken already.

One of the most extraordinarily well-received graphic novels in France and the winner of the French national cartooning award "Alph'Art," Epileptic will intrigue American readers with its sharp yet (mostly) sympathetic treatment of the '70s alternative-health milieu and its often harrowing depiction of a family under siege by this singular and devastating malady. Co-published with France's L'Association.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1345058 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

From Publishers Weekly
David B. is one of the founders of the French experimental comics collective L'Association, and this hallucinatory work (the first of two volumes) is a sort of refracted story of his childhood when he was known as Pierre-Fran‡ois. On a literal level, it's a fascinating memoir of how his brother's epilepsy became the driving force of his family's life in the 1960s and '70s. Desperate to find a cure for his brother's condition, his parents turn to ascetic macrobiotic cults, deeply esoteric spiritualists and more in search of something that might help him. They encounter all manner of cruelty and quackery but occasionally find something that helps. B.'s own fascination with history and war seems to protect him from the despair that perpetually surrounds the family. His visual retelling of their suffering is a masterpiece of surrealistic cartooning and fantastic imagery. Readers see B. as a child; as his mind blurs the distinction between reality, metaphor and fiction, so does his art. He draws a macrobiotic healer as a cartoon tiger, and fills the book with iconic metaphors for disease (epilepsy is like a demon from a cave drawing). His has a fascination with Swedenborgian mysticism and Samurai warriors, who are vehicles for gorgeously stylized b&w illustrations of warfare and bloodletting. The narrative thread peels aside for digressions to depict young Pierre-Fran‡ois' dreams or to carefully denote the family's endless efforts to find relief for their son and ultimately for themselves. Almost every panel is a graphic balancing act between representation and psychological distortion. This is truly a remarkable and powerful piece of comics narration.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-This autobiographical work plumbs the psychological, social, and symbolic reaches of the author's experiences in a family that must deal with a devastating disease. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in France's Loire Valley, Jean-Christophe developed grand mal epilepsy around the age of 11. Pierre-Francois, nine, observes his brother's battle with the physical and social implications of the disease; their parents' efforts to find management of it through medical, macrobiotic, and even psychic interventions; and the author's own development in this milieu as a boy obsessed with history and warfare and as a dedicated artist. This is a full-strength novel with well-developed characters, subplots concerning both World Wars, and riffs on the popular culture of the period in which hip Westerners looked to the East for solutions to health and spiritual maladies. David B.'s black-and-white panels spin with Jungian figures of serpents and offer snapshots of commune kitchens, woodlots haunted by his recently deceased grandfather, and street alleys where neighborhood children fantasize the distant past and uncharted future. This volume comprises half of the eight titles originally published in French, and readers will eagerly await its companion. Teens who have read Don Trembath's Lefty Carmichael Has a Fit (Orca, 2000) or Lauren Slater's Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir (Random, 2000) may find this book to be the one that encourages them to become aficionados of sophisticated, graphic-novel literature.
Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
The French cartoonist Pierre-François Beauchard (he changed his name to David B. as a teen-ager) had an unremarkable childhood in nineteen-sixties France, until his older brother, Jean-Christophe, began to have epileptic seizures. This graphic memoir depicts, with an admirable lack of sentimentality, how dealing with illness can become a power struggle as desperate and corrupting as that of war. The family's youngest child, Florence, attempts suicide; Pierre-François fantasizes about killing his brother; and Jean-Christophe's rages become increasingly unmanageable and violent. The Beauchards' futile quest for a cure takes them from surgeons to macrobiotic diets to spiritual mediums. David B. draws these potential solutions as totemic symbols, and, in one haunting panel, his mother is surrounded by their jeering, insistent forms. "So long as my mother hasn't tried every single one she'll be tormented by guilt," he writes.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Brilliant
To people who reject newer narrative forms, I have always said that genius surfaces in every medium. The graphic novel MAUS is a good proof. Now, I have found another one in this fine work by David B. Epileptic is the life story, actually, of the author/artist, and his family as they go through the profoundly moving events surrounding David's older brother's epilepsy. I must say that the casual cruelty to which this child was subjected by the community was shocking. While it is true that that is the basic core around which the story develops, it is also about David's coming to grips with his own personal fears and demons, along with his development as an artist. It was interesting to see how much quackery his family was subjected to -- the desperate parents who love their son so much that they try anything at all that seems to offer hope. At any rate, I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the subject, and also anyone who is interested in outstanding graphic work.

stalked by the ghost of his illness
This has got to be one of the most inventive and stirring "graphic novels" ever published. (Actually the term graphic novel is a misnomer here because it's a non-fiction memoir.) The story concerns how David B grew up in France under the shadow of his brother's illness. His brother had severe epilepsy, with serious seizures every day, and ended up chronically ill and unstable, both physically and mentally. While the family wasted their time and hopes on all sorts of homeopathic quacks and mystical charlatans, David B felt himself battling insanity and loneliness, perhaps convinced that epilepsy would get him too, after already destroying the stability of his family. It's a unique life story, but what possibly matters more here is David B's incredible artwork. His work is overwhelmingly dark, with a great amount of black ink illustrating both literal and allegorical darkness. His style also greatly utilizes frightening surrealism, and he has a great ability to illustrate fear and frustration symbolically. My favorite example is David B's depiction of his brother's epilepsy as a Chinese dragon that erupts from his brother's body and looms ominously over the family, while his brother himself is later depicted as a dark and threatening bogeyman when his behavior is damaged by seizures and psychosis. In addition to being a truly scary and saddening story of how regular people must deal with a loved one's terrifying illness, this book is also a feast for the eyes, with superbly eye-catching and thought-provoking artwork. [~doomsdayer520~]

A visual treat with a deeper message
I read this book from the perspective of having a family member with epilepsy. Not only is this a great "graphic novel," it accurately portrays the experience one has living with a family member that is afflicted. It was astonishing to me that the author's family was so heavily involved with alternative therapies. I can identify since that has been a factor in our family too. Macrobiotics played a prominent role in both cases initially but without effect. Reading about their journey left me not knowing whether to laugh or cry since so many of those experiences are familiar.

I knew I was going to identify with this book after reading page 10. On that page is a picture of many doctors making a big ring around the patient and his parents. It is so typical of the endless search for a treatment that will bring back the person that we knew before the seizures started. One phenomenon this book so accurately captures is a feeling of near helplessness as the seizures come and go in spite of medical therapy. Then with poor control the afflicted individual can slowly slide down a path of mental deterioration.

I was impressed with how many alternative therapies were tried before the family gave up. Each new alternative therapy was like the hope of a "cure" dangling just out of reach. They seemed to go through the range of conventional medical therapies offered at the time as well. Possibly, frustration with conventional medicine, due to unrealistic expectations, leads one to explore the other paths of unconventional treatments.

The artwork is magnificent. The symbolism is wonderful. To grasp it all would require a reading dedicated to pondering each image, and possibly the reader would need a personal experience with a family member or friend that was afflicted with epilepsy. I enjoy flipping through the book now to relive the experience I had reading it the first time. The drawings bring back the emotions.

I highly recommend this book. For those that would try alternative therapy for epilepsy, to the exclusion of what modern western medicine has to offer, the outcome of the book might make them think twice.