Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan (review)

Tan's rich imagination awakened wide-ranging philosophical reflection in his Tales from Outer Suburbia (BCCB 3/09); here he directs more pointed attention to the specific conditions of urban life. In luminous poetry, prose, and artwork, he weaves magical tales based on twenty-five creatures. Some have been displaced from their natural habitats and driven to extinction by urban development while others settle happily into city life, but all take on mythical dimensions: moonfish and whales take to the skies, the souls of horses bound over rooftops and electrical wires, and bears hire lawyers to plead for their right to walk the streets unmolested. Through stories that are as enigmatic and multivalent as the artwork that accompanies them, Tan questions the effects of the Anthropocene, evoking by turns a sense of longing and regret, wonder and joy, forgiveness and a desire for restoration and companionship. Each piece is fronted by a silhouette of an animal, and accompanied by either a single illustration or a series of diverse conceptual works that add a quietly haunting elegance to the text. In the tradition of animal folktales, these sparkling and original tales feature transformations, comforting connections, lingering fears, and comical whimsy. So much more than simple allegories of urban decay or the loss of livable habitats for either animals or humans, these tales resist interpretation and yet generously repay rereading and lingering reflection. They are stories and poems to sit with, to live with, to read to oneself and aloud with friends so that readers and hearers might be enveloped with the quiet wonder Tan brings to the urban landscape. KC