Tell Me Something

A blank-eyed, silent meditation on young love thwarted and re-kindled. If we can have graphic novels, we can surely have graphic novellas, and this latest book from the acclaimed Norwegian cartoonist Jason is a prime example of a tight, self-contained volume that tells one complete, satisfying story in a compact 48 pages. Tell Me Something picks up the stylized anthropomorphic characters of Jason's earlier works (Hey, Wait... and The Iron Wagon), as well as the challenge of all-pantomime (or almost) comics of Sshhhh! to weave a yarn of young love thwarted and re-kindled. Switching smoothly between two time periods, alternating moments of tenderness and sadness with slapstick and irony, Tell Me Something is a virtuoso technical achievement as well as a funny and sad tale of romance and treachery. New readers will find themselves astonished at how deeply they come to identify with Jason's stylized, blank-eyed menagerie of characters, while those who shed a tear at Hey, Wait... will be somewhat prepared for the emotional wallops contained in this slender but perfect book in which every single line counts, and words are not needed.