(Once or twice a week, I take a new book with me to lunch and give it a half an hour or so to grab my attention. Lunch Date is my judgment on that speed-dating experience.)
Who's your date today? The Lagoon, by Lilli Carré.
Where'd you go? Pizza Fusion, across the street from La Spiga.
What'd you eat? Personal meat pizza ($7.95).
How was the food? It was fine, thin-crust pizza, although the sauce and cheese could both use a little more pep. The cheese was a little on the bland side and the sauce, although peppery, required a whole lot of garlic salt to make the pizza memorable. As a side note, I know I can be an idiot sometimes, but it honestly didn't occur to me until I looked it up just now that Pizza Fusion is a coast-to-coast franchised restaurant. When I thought it was just a start-up, locally-owned restaurant, the slogan ("Saving the World...One Pizza At a Time") seemed annoying, but Seattle-earnest and tolerable. Now that I know they have branches in Kansas, it's flat-out obnoxious. I feel vaguely manipulated, although I have nobody to blame but myself.
What does your date say about itself? "Each member of a family reacts differently to the seductive siren song that can be heard down by the water after dark in Lilli Carré's haunting and lyrical debut graphic novel. Rhythms—Grandpa's taps, the ticking of a metronome—are punctuated by silences in this "sound"-driven story. Readers are invited to imagine an enigmatic creature's haunting, ever-shifting tune as it reverberates through weedy waters, eventually escaping the lagoon to waft through the windows at night..."
Is there a representative quote?
Will you two end up in bed together? Well, we would've, except for I read the whole thing at lunch, twice. It's a really nice story, about a lagoon monster and his relationship with a family. The art, to me, resembles Richard Sala and Charles Burns making sweet, sweet love. I reviewed Carré's short work in the Best American Comics 2008 here, and I was charmed but not blown away. As a first long-form work, though, this is phenomenal.
