- Publisher : Fantagraphics Books
- Author : Mark Kalesniko
- Format : Black & White
- Large Size Manga : Approx. 11" X 7.5"
- Page : 262
"Kalesniko is an expert at sophisticated, visually efficient narrative renderings of complex emotions. His drawings are spare and cinematic, and each panel underscores the characters' isolation or another revealing detail. This is a sensitive and intelligent look at the contradictory impulses behind cultural stereotypes." - Publishers Weekly "[The] deceptively simple premise is given real emotional weight by the deft handling of dialogue and the delicately rendered black-and-white penmanship. The art is in the apparent artlessness, and the book announces Kalesniko as an exciting talent on the graphic novel scene." - The London Observer Kalesniko's nuanced linework has virtually no equal in the medium: the clean brushtrokes of his faces and the unruly mess he makes of human hair says as much about the collision of fantasy and reality as any word balloon in the book." - The Onion "Excellently crafted not only in its finely sketched drawings, but also in its story about a Korean mail order bride's mission to be her own person and not someone else's ideal." - Tablet Mark Kalesniko's third graphic novel is his most ambitious work yet. Kyung Seo, the mail order bride, is more fully human than her Canadian suitor, Monty Wheeler, ever anticipated. Neither party to the arrangement is satisfied by their new life together, and what appears initially to be a matter of unrealized expectations colliding with reality evolves into a complex struggle to reconcile conflicting moral values and emotional needs that culminates in an incendiary self-scrutiny and a humbling reconciliation. Rarely has a cartoon narrative so deftly juggled such polarizing moral and emotional issues with such bewildering ambiguities.
