Reviews for Exorcising Ghosts

The average rating for Exorcising Ghosts based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-18 00:00:00 Frances Frischkorn Flower and Fade is an inconsequential little book that offers the wax and the wane of a relationship, charted over the course of about six months through a chronological series of disjointed vignettes. Rather than create a sturdy narrative, these pericopae instead give the sense of emotional movement first toward relationship and then away from the same. In this inventive exercise in storytelling, Flower to Fade succeeds and gives the reader a sense of why this romance isn't necessarily going to make it. Still, despite the book's success on these terms, it's rather slight and doesn't offer much to the reader. The characters (almost by necessity) are rather bland and don't leave the impression that they're the type you'd want to fall in love with (or maybe even befriend). The book's goal is subdued and not really all that ambitious (not that it seems intended to be). Some may criticize my review, concerned that I'm complaining that the book was not what I wanted it to be: this isn't the case. More, I'm simply concerned that the volume doesn't merit the pricetag on its rear cover. I borrowed Flower to Fade from the library, which was good because I wouldn't have felt satisfied paying $13.95 (retail price) for the work. It's not that it's bad; more just that it's not powerful enough to resonate in any way that will stick with the average reader. My personal thought is that this project would have been better realized as a webcomic. As a bound book, there's just too much out there that tells similar stories in more indelible ways (if not in the same way).

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-28 00:00:00 Rob Sands This is an earlier, less mature work by the author of Joe & Azat, which I LOVED. In some ways, this is a more poetic piece. There are some really fantastical sequences from a party, there are some dream depictions which make good use of visual metaphor. For me, I think the main weakness here is panel size uniformity. Almost all the pages (except for title pages for chapters) have six panels, in roughly the same proportions. There are some moments and sequences when I really wanted to rest my eyes, but the pacing here kept me flipping pages. Also, Comics Lit published this in a relatively small size and some of the pages feel like they'd be more impactful in larger scale. The story itself is pretty par for the course for a reader who partakes in a lot of semi-autobiographical graphic novels. Bitter-sweet, wistful, two-freaks-stuck-in-a-doomed-cliche. I feel like the characters could have been fleshed out a bit more - the work and goal drama is a little out of the blue. But maybe everypeople are what Lonergan's going for here. I find his drawing style more aesthetically pleasing here than in Joe & Azat, and though the storytelling is a bit more experimental, it also feels less mature than in that other work.