posted on 12 Feb 2017

The City by Armin Greder

I love the work of this Swiss born Australian illustrator. His superb fable of the plight of the new arrival or outsider, The Island, is an absolute triumph and I picked up The City on the strength of his earlier work. Greder’s books must cause booksellers and librarians plenty of headaches in trying to decide which section they belong in. At first glance they look like children’s or young adult picture books – there are very few words – but both the graphic nature of the drawings and the sombre themes suggest they would be best shelved alongside other adult literature. Ultimately I guess the obvious thing to do is put them in both but I found this copy in the children’s illustrated section and I wouldn’t mind guessing that it didn’t get much of a look in alongside the more traditional children’s picture book classics.

The tale the book tells is seemingly simple but it is a story packed with symbolism which stands constant reinterpretation as the layers get stripped away. Living in a city of seeming perpetual winter, a woman has a child that she pledges to keep safe at any cost. Deciding this promise is best kept by leaving the potentially perilous city the woman takes her son deep into the unmapped woodlands and builds a house where no-one will find them.

 

 

But the child is made curious about the city when a troupe of colourful travelling players happen by seeking directions to town. He asks his mother if they will ever go there but she doesn’t answer. Tragedy, however, is just around the corner when the woman dies leaving the boy bereft and having to fend for himself. Eventually he decides he must leave the cottage and he takes what’s left of his mother’s bones with him. Assailed along the way by the terror of a wolf he learns how to fight his fear and after vanquishing the beast he buries his mother’s bones and sets out for a life in the city.

 

 

Greder is brilliant at using charcoal-grey shadow to depict menace and his modern fairy tales lean heavily on the archetypes of that genre. He also knows how and when to inject a blast of vibrant colour and that is always done to achieve specific effects – in the case of The City the incursion of colour from the band of travelling players speaks articulately about the sense of life, excitement and promise that the city holds.

The book was published in 2010 by Allen and Unwin and copies can be purchased for well under £10 although you’ll pay substantially more if you want a first edition.

 

Terry Potter

February 2017