the bottomless belly button - dash snow

I was surprised but after a second though, unsurprised at stumbling upon a small graphic novels section in the Architecture and Fine Arts library at school last Friday. After my midterm review I went downstairs to the library to check out a few titles a reviewer had recommended I check out, when my roving eye caught some pretty artwork and enticing titles. Without batting an eyelash I must have grabbed 3 or 4 titles and adding those to the 3 architecture books I got I returned upstairs with a heavy but un-daunting load of reading material.

'The Bottomless Belly Button' is a 720 page epic about the breakdown of a family and how everyone in it reacts to it. The Loony family, with septuagenerian Grandma and Grandpa Loony on the verge of divorce, are having one last week-long family reunion as the divorce is being finalized. The three grown children all react differently - Dennis, the oldest, with the recent arrival of his own child takes the news the hardest and tries to understand what could break apart the seemingly peaceful 40 year marriage of his parents. Claire, who has gone through her own divorce is trying to maintain closeness to her teenage daughter Jill, while Peter, the youngest at age 26, still has yet to find himself or engage in a meaningful relationship. The story and characters seem deceptively simple, because it is a finely crafted, nuanced tale that feels so real as you read it. The artwork is rather simplistic and somewhat crude even, but after being used to viewing such meticulously lined work as Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine and Craig Thompson it's refreshing, and if anything the art greatly supports/outlines the story.

Until recent years I would get frustrated by endings of stories, films, books that had no definite, concrete ending, but now I prefer them that way, because life is exactly like that. When a chapter ends it's almost never a clean, 'HERE'S WHEN IT ENDS!' Only after time and perspective is one able to make that distinction, and to hand it off to the reader in such a way undermines the intelligence of the reader, I think. That's not to say leave me hanging, but a lot of times when it's done right, there's a sense of closure with enough room to ponder.