Review by Booklist Review
By a tidal pool near a small beach on France's Mediterranean coast, a North African-looking man glimpses a young woman stripping to swim. Later, but still early in the morning, three families intent on sunbathing and picnicking encounter the man, then find the girl's corpse in the pool. One paterfamilias, a racist, xenophobic physician, angrily accuses the North African of murder and calls the cops. While awaiting the police, the doctor's mother dies. The young children of two of the families start growing, the little ones right out of their swimsuits and the preteens into puberty. The adults are changing, too. Attempts to leave the area prove futile, and further calls don't go through. At the rate they're aging, they'll all be dead by tomorrow morning. Peeters' accomplished European realist comics style and Levy's utterly natural dialogue suit to a tee this maximally eerie, unsettlingly plein air exercise that Kafkaesquely defies all explanation.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A secluded beach becomes the stage for self-discovery for various strangers bound together during the most important moment of their lives in this graphic novel, which begins like a murder mystery, continues like an episode of the Twilight Zone, and finishes with a kind of existentialism that wouldn't be out of place in a Von Trier film. An early morning vignette with a mysterious swimmer and a perching voyeur is soon interrupted when families arrive at the beach, bringing their cluttered lives with them. The geological, primordial beauty of the cove can't soften the anger and sarcasm of the complicated generational relationships that land on it that morning-the spousal bickering, the teenage angst, as multiple visitors snipe, attempt to escape from each other, demand attention that never comes, and fixate on tiny quirks about their day that soon blossom into something to panic about. When the members of the group finally understand their situation, they find themselves challenged to cherish every moment of life that might be left for them after years of never living at all. Levy is Peeters's collaborator on a film adaptation of the graphic memoir Blue Pills; together they take this idea to frantic, metaphoric heights. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
