The Marvels by Brian Selznick (review)

Selznick continues his quest to shake up notions of illustrated novels, wordless storytelling, and the intersection of text and pictures in this newest volume. The first 400 pages or so of the novel are wordless pencil illustrations, featuring his familiar careful, soft-textured hatching and cross-hatching and full-bleed spreads. In the pictures, a legacy unfolds, as generations of a family, beginning in 1766, all participate in theater in varying ways. The text section picks up the narrative in 1990 with the story of Joseph, a boy who seeks more home than his absentee parents and boarding school provide, so he runs away to his uncle’s magnificent residence. It takes Joseph a while to make his uncle warm up to him and to sort out what’s going on in this strange house where everything appears chaotic but is actually carefully, lovingly curated. The eventual story that emerges, of a beloved partner the uncle lost to AIDS and stories shared and created between the men while they were together, will likely surprise all but the most careful readers who spot very subtle clues in advance. A brief, visual-only epilogue is an effective closer, weaving together the two sections and offering a gently warm ending to a story that sometimes brims with melancholy. The novel as a whole is exactly the sort of theater that is so lovingly described within, and that too won’t be lost on readers. An afterword describes the real elements from which the novel was drawn (referencing the Dennis Severs’ House in England) and includes a full copy of an elegantly written obituary for Severs published in the Guardian in 2000.