Review by Booklist Review
Lust follows her award-winning graphic memoir Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life (2009) with an ambitious comics adaptation of a novel by German writer Marcel Beyer, which powerfully juxtaposes heedless evil and naive innocence. Hermann Karnau, a sound engineer working for the Third Reich, progresses from engineering the sound at rallies to conducting grisly experiments on the vocal chords of concentration-camp prisoners. Karnau's work puts him in contact with Joseph Goebbels, leading to an unlikely friendship with the propaganda minister's young daughter Helga. Lust conveys the story through alternating first-person accounts narrated by the pair; the visual depiction of Karnau's callous rise through the Reich's hierarchy is formally audacious befitting Karnau's profession, Lust is particularly effective at integrating the dialogue and sound effects with the graphics contrasting with her relatively straightforward treatment of Helga's growing awareness of the war's barbarity. Their stories converge in Hitler's underground bunker in the final days of the Reich. The respective fates of the two protagonists provide a poignant end to this devastating work.--Flagg, Gordon Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Following her award-winning graphic novel memoir Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life, Lust adapts The Karnau Tapes, Beyer's dense, dark novel set during the collapse of the Third Reich. She is more than up to the task, transmuting the material with visual imagination and insight. The narrative switches between two small cogs in the relentless machinery of the Reich: Hermann Karnau, a sound engineer who progresses from arranging the speakers at Nazi rallies to conducting bizarre aural experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and Helga, the eldest daughter of Joseph Goebbels, who, along with her siblings, is destined to be murdered by her parents in Hitler's bunker. Lust's loose, deceptively simple art, tinted in washes of faded color, creates a mood of deepening claustrophobia as the complicit Karnau and the innocent Helga descend toward the same fate. It's a rare adaptation that, rather than simply transcribing the source material, transcends it. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Ignorance turns from bliss into waking nightmares for the two protagonists of this graphic adaptation of German author Beyer's novel Flughunde (The Karnau Tapes). Set in Nazi Germany, the story centers on audio engineer Hermann Karnau, whose job allows him to pursue his obsession with capturing the human voice, even as it involves amplifying the speeches of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler. Karnau encounters Goebbels's eldest daughter Helga throughout the war years, the two forming a mutually cherished friendship. While Karnau remains blind to the evil of the Third Reich, Helga gradually realizes the widening gap between the reassurances of the adults around her and the clear, present danger of her reality. Readers can debate how well Lust's (Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life) frequently dark palette and gangling comic strip artwork punctuated by scenes of destruction distill the novel's essence as well as her management of the narrative flashbacks and flash-forwards, as the story reaches its melancholy conclusion. Verdict A strong optional purchase for fans of the source material, Lust, or historical wartime fiction. Disturbing imagery and content throughout; suitable for teens and up.-J. Osicki, Saint John Free P.L., NB © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A peculiar man obsessed with the human voice and the preteen daughter of a Nazi propagandist cross paths during the later stages of World War II: Austrian cartoonist Lust's (The Big Feminist But, 2014, etc.) first graphic novel is an adaptation of Marcel Beyer's novel The Karnau Tapes (1995).Hermann Karnau has been fascinated by sound since he was a young boy savoring the silence of early mornings (before it was ruined by "imperious voices" and "clamor and commotion"), and this aural obsession eventually leads him to audio engineering work for the Third Reich. While recording radio propaganda at the home of a Nazi officera never-named Joseph GoebbelsKarnau begins a friendship with the man's six children, particularly the oldest, Helga, who notices troubling incongruities between the world her parents portray to her and the world she directly observes. Karnau and Helga alternate narration, with Karnau indulging his obsession with perverse experiments and dissections in search of the bloody biology behind voice and sound and Helga growing aware of the lies and ugliness propping up her life of privilege and luxury, especially as the Soviet advance sends her and her siblings into a crumbling bunker with the retreating Nazi elitewhere her parents' words of reassurance are increasingly betrayed by the desperation they can't keep from physically manifesting. The book is troubling and profound, with characters driven to find truths that ultimately prove devastating. Lust's clean, confident lines richly convey everything from a child's discomfort with a haircut to a dog's eagerness to play to Karnau's sheer bliss from a "quivering glottis." Lust's inventive paneling both offers diagrammatic images to underscore Karnau's reductive mind and, combined with onomatopoeic captions, deftly ratchets the tension. The illustration style and muted color palette (like an aged newspaper) achieve a haunting realism despite cartoonish exaggeration and expressionistic flourishes. Stunning. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
