Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Xeric Award-winner Martinson gives us a fully realized, engaging tale of international alienation. Ivy League grad Dan Wells has arrived in Japan to take his first job ever, assisting in English instruction classes at a small-town junior-high school. In his first months on the job, he faces boredom between classes (not all the Japanese teachers want his assistance, but he has made a contractual agreement to be on site at the school all day, every day), homesickness, the reality that he doesn't readily become a glib Japanese conversationalist, and the rebuffs of other Westerners, who are either better prepared for the foreign experience or so quick to dismiss Japanese culture that they don't engage the existential truth that alienation is more about the foreigner than about the host. Martinson's daintily shaded and cross-hatched panels fit both the setting and Dan's mood. Sly visual puns, particularly surrounding Dan's inability to understand spoken Japanese but clarity about the temperaments of the speakers, spice the otherwise reportorial account. Martinson's highly autobiographical fictional graphic novel conveys the feel as well as the facts of his hero's experience of romanticism confronted by reality.--Goldsmith, Francisca Copyright 2008 Booklist