Woman's World

When I was a child I loved to climb into the window seat behind my grandmother's sofa, draw the curtains so I was hidden from anyone who came into the room, and spend hours poring over the stack of 1960s Home Beautiful and Women's Weekly magazines that resided there. The brittle, yellowing pages held such a visual fascination, with their improbable promises of domestic perfection, and this book transported me right back there. I worried that the cut-and-paste style would prove distracting or that the narrative and the rhythm of the words would suffer from the limitations that Rawle imposed on himself, but I was delighted to find that, despite my reservations, the opposite occurred. The appearance of the text -- gigantic drop capitals, strange fonts, pictures -- adds to the reading experience, as does the quirky injection of bathos or humour when Rawle quotes directly from ads for soap powder, advice columns, or romance stories. My advice to you? As Kate Samperi would say, take your time to really taste and savour the exquisite word play and artistic presentation of this graphic novel.

This story is well written, fun, creative & clever. The text/picture cutouts sprinkle 1960s language & images into a modern-day tale. An intriguing story that kept me delighted turning pages to see what the author's creativity would reveal. An absolute masterpiece of writing and art combined. Get it - you've not seen anything like it before.

As an English teacher in an urban setting, I am always searching for literature that is 'outside the box,' that breaks the rules of stuffy, formulaic writing by writers who have no artistic vision. With "Woman's World" I have ignited young adults struggling with literacy; they are creating their own literary visions from music and art magazines. Is not the purppose of literature to implore the reader to think, to create, to act? Is this not the a similar purpose of an artist? Not only are my students engaging in this artistic journey, but two other teachers are now using it. "Woman's World" is a complelling read, to say the least. Each line, each phrase, each word, draws the reader to think of the process, thus, one is drawn not only into the characters' lives, but one is drawn into the writer's life as well. What a refreshing read!

The `woman' of the title exists through the cuttings that make up her story: so that in effect, the narrator is created by the text itself. This sounds a bit too clever by half: and it is: but that doesn't stop it being an un - put - down - able read. Graham Rawle's expert manipulation of cuttings from 1960s womens' magazines presents a deeply compelling psychological portrait. A fascinating insight into the mindset of a `lady' prescribed by the media of the time - promoting obsession with home furnishings, elegant waistlines and a naive notion of romantic love - is juxtaposed with the ever more complex reality of a troubled and restless mind unable to lay ghosts from the past to rest. You're reeled in by a need to determine the `real' voice through the dizzying proliferation of media jargon and retro fashion imagery. As the plot seeps through the cracks between cuttings, the depiction of lonely characters going about their suburban routine existences masterfully undercuts the superficial glossy ideal. Our heroine's clumsy foot tries to boot the gritty banality of her world into a relentlessly romantic vision of glamorous cosmopolitanism. The fit is as ungainly as the dresses she dons. The result is by turns painfully sad, eery and hysterically funny. Latent hysteria sets the pace of this unlikely thriller, where reality and fantasy head for a full - on collision. Each page is a work of art: incorporating the whimsical phraseology of the time, lacing kitsch inanities with instances of poetic poignancy, punctuating moments of insight with visual cues, the text literally sliding off the page in moments of panic. The modern - day Frankenstein's monster wears `raucous red Boulevard Court shoes'.

At first glance one may screech, what?! a cut and paste novel made from the glam women's rags of the early sixties. I know I did and then I started to read. You only need suspend belief for a minute and before you know it, you are roped in and couldn't imagine the story being told any other way. Reading it is visceral and as you become immersed, trust me you will, in the strange goings on of this odd family you begin to believe and are a bit unsettled by how close we all are to the edge. At many points this noir thriller takes unexpected turns, they seem so obvious as you pass them, but are so unforseen. I loved Hugo Cabret for many of the same reasons I loved this work of visual dexterity. It rollicks, creates laugh out loud harrumphs, makes you want to shake the characters off the page, and little could one believe that you would end up caring as much as you do. Masterfully "written" with the phrases that make it a time capsule and encapsulating the products of the era this is one woman's world you do not want to miss. You just can't put it down.