To build a fire

Celebrated French cartoonist Chabouté adapts the great American writer Jack London's tale of a desperate gold prospector in the freezing tundra of northern Canada. As stark a story as London ever spun, it witnesses the hapless prospector and his reluctant canine companion travel to a not-so-nearby camp in inconceivably frigid temperatures. The man's ego and misjudgment lead him to catastrophe, and his entire life rests on his ability to light, with frozen hands, just one more fire. Chabouté and translator Laura Waters elegantly shift London's original third-person narration into second-person, investing the reader's emotions in a story that might otherwise be observed from a cold remove. Chabouté's visual skill is much about starkness, and here he finds fitting ways to highlight the bleakness through harsh contrasts: the flat whiteness of the snow against the vaulting darkness of the trees; the blank and empty expanses against the blazing colors of an all-too-brief flame. A slim, desolate tale told with uncommon and disquieting beauty.--Jesse Karp Copyright 2019 Booklist