The House

by Paco Roca, Andrea Rosenberg (Translator)

Overview

In this graphic novel by the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Wrinkles cartoonist, three adult siblings relive old conflicts as they clear out the family vacation home after their father’s death.

The graphic novel The House is at once deeply personal (dedicated to Roca’s own deceased father) and entirely universal. Three adult siblings return to their family’s vacation home a year after their father’s death. They each bring their respective wives, husbands, and children with the intention to clean up the residence and put it on the market. But, as garbage is hauled off and dust is wiped away, decades-old resentments quickly fill the vacant home. Roca asks what happens to brothers and sisters when the only person holding the family together is now gone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683962632
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Pages:	134
Sales rank:	442,983
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Paco Roca (Francisco Martínez Roca) is a graphic artist and a cartoonist from Valencia, Spain, who has won several art/writing awards. His graphic novel Wrinkles has been adapted into an animated movie.

Andrea Rosenberg is a translator who has worked on a variety of novels and graphic narratives in Spanish and Portuguese. Her translations of the graphic novels Run For It by Marcelo D’Salete and The House by Paco Roca won Eisner Awards in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

Editorial Reviews

09/02/2019

Roca (Twists of Fate) examines grief as an overstuffed house that the bereaved must restore, rebuild, and, ultimately, let go in this touching and pensive ensemble cast graphic novel. Siblings Jose, Vicente, and Carla journey to put their family’s vacation home in order after their father dies. They tease, bicker, and sift through his trophies, garden detritus, and unfinished projects as they confront unanswerable questions: Was their father proud of their accomplishments? And what do they want to do with the legacy they have been left? Roca forces his trio of protagonists to wrestle with the inscrutability of clues their father left behind, from his sun hat to the cracked and mildewed pool they helped him build as children (some remembering loving this labor, others resenting it). The cool-toned colors render even the most cozy parts of the home alien, and Roca depicts the plants and furniture in more detail than the cast of characters, creating a remove that mirrors their father’s distance. In the end, Roca concludes that grief is an active process, one each sibling must move through alone, even as they try to join in decisions together. Though it doesn’t close on a tidy moral, the reader is left feeling that hope lies with the living, despite the mistakes of the past. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"A study of the complex relationships of family and the ties that bind from a storyteller whose powerful depiction of human frailties is both haunting and ever recognisable."

Broken Frontier

"A moving exploration of family dynamics in the face of loss. Roca’s illustrations bring it to a whole other level and make The House the gorgeous piece of art that it is."

Book Riot

12/01/2019

Following the death of their father, a trio of siblings converges upon their family's decaying vacation house in order to prepare it for sale. As they clear the yard, restore crumbling walls, and repair leaky pipes, José ponders whether their father was proud of his professional accomplishments, Carla laments that he died before getting to spend much time with her daughter, and oldest son Vicente struggles with whether he made the right choice when he decided not to have him resuscitated on his deathbed. A mildewed swimming pool, a hastily assembled pergola, and orange and almond trees all serve as triggers for memories of the energetic, inventive man their father was in his youth and the depressive loner he became in his declining years, leading the siblings to wonder if selling the property will sever their connection to their father, and one another, forever. VERDICT Celebrated Spanish creator Roca's (Twist of Fate) cartoonishly drawn characters are juxtaposed against highly detailed backgrounds, showcasing the strange dislocation they feel inhabiting a space that ought to feel much more like home in this melancholy and deeply sympathetic meditation on sibling dynamics and the role memory plays in the grieving process. [Note: a simultaneously released Spanish-language edition is also available from the publisher.—Ed.]

Library Journal