A passionate testament to the author and illustrator’s humility at the unexpected small moments that shape life, love and death, Daytripper is a book like no other. Part philosophy, part magical realism the team uses color, line and words to weave through era’s of Bras’ lifetime in a random order. In chapter one he is 32, and then 21, and then 11, and so on. The narrative is part personal reflection and part action and the combination allows the story to burrow into deep crevices of the character’s mind.
“People like to believe there are mysteries yet to be discovered, loves to be lived.”
Daytripper demands attention from its very first exquisite frame. It shows the back of a painter, his canvas with the beginning of a portrait and a post-sex woman lounging on a day bed. The text, an obituary written by the book’s main character Bras de Olivia Domingos reads:
When the cancer that had spread throughout most of his brain finally took the best of him, Schlomo Lerner had, at the age of 89, been in love 274 times. For each of his lovers the famous painter had made a portrait.
Bras works as an obituary writer to pay the bills but his dream is to write a great novel. Bras struggles with drive and confidence to write. He has a complicated relationship with his father whom he both admires and resents and he relies heavily on the friendship that he has with Jorge.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from or how you’re feel, there’s always peace in a strong up of coffee.”
Chapter one is told in a perfectly measured circular story pattern that makes the reader hunger to see what will come next. Each following chapter continues to provide some insight into who Bras is and how he became the man that he is. Each chapter ends with a possible way that Bras could die. Some as gentle as quiet heart attack others as violent as being hit by a truck or stabbed to death. The meaning of these deaths doesn’t reveal itself until the end of the book.
This book is also a love story to Brazil. With beautiful illustrations of it’s buildings, foods, homes and people.
“Isn’t it funny how we always seem to remember the trivial things from our daily lives, yet we so often forget the most important ones?”
Written and illustrated by twin brothers Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon, Daytripper is a masterpiece of storytelling and design with dozens of frame-worthy quotes, plenty of unexpected turns and a style and voice that readers will want to pour through again and again.
HipMamaJenn 