Title: Artichoke Tales
Author: Megan Kelso
Context: The story in the graphic novel takes place in a world that echoes our own but whose people, instead of hair have artichoke leaves. The novel is a coming-of-age story about Brigitte a young girl. Her family is caught between two warring sides in a civil war. A moving story is woven about a family caught in the middle of a war.
Synopsis: Megan Kelso took around six years in the making of the graphic novel, Artichoke Tales, expanding her page count and range by creating a family saga spanning across an entire continent and three generations. The delicate line is uniquely combined in visual storytelling with musical and rhythmic page compositions. A dramatic tension is created between the ruminative, intimate character studies and unflinching depiction of the results of slaughter and war which lends resonance and solidarity to an epic of different generations of a family.
The story is about a kingdom segregated between its industrial north and agricultural south. The queen of the kingdom does not prove to be worthy enough for her people though the whole system is dedicated to her success. The story is also about the saga of a house-divided family in which love, attraction and sex play a vital role as gender, politics and war roles.
Artichoke Tales has been one of the most eagerly anticipated graphic novels of the year 2010 for the author. The designative ‘artichokes’ are people for all purposes and intents however the only difference is that their hair appears like the pointed leaves of the vegetable called artichoke. Any reader, lucky enough to read this graphic novel is sure to have the book explode in the mind, like a bomb.
Other works by the author:
1993 – Girlhero (Minicomic)
1998 – Queen of the Black Black
2006 – Squirrel Mother
Published : The Squirrel Mother
Published : Queen of the Black Black
Editor – Scherherazade: Stories of Love, Treachery, Mothers and Monsters
