19 Jan / The Adoption by Zidrou, illustrated by Arno Monin, translated by Jeremy Melloul [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
“They wanted to start a family, and now they’ve destroyed one,” Gabriel laments. When that family – including his closest friends – all gathered for a surprise party for his 75th birthday, Gabriel was still a grandfather to beloved Qinaya, adopted by his son, Alain, and daughter-in-law, Lynette, from Arequipa, Peru, after a devastating 8.4 earthquake. Gabriel had initially been the most reticent about the adorable 4-year-old, but he quickly became the most attached. And then the party ends in utter shock: Alain is arrested for kidnapping, and Qinaya is returned to Peru while the rest of the family falls apart.
Gabriel holds on to two words in Aymaran, his granddaughter’s native language: achachi (grandfather) and qinaya (cloud – ethereal and fleeting). Unmoored and bereft, Gabriel eventually travels from France to Peru, where he meets a Belgian stranger who is also seeking someone missing. Somehow, the unlikely pair will help each other find some semblance of healing.
Zidrou’s unforgettable narrative is made utterly spectacular in glorious full color by award-winning artist Arno Monin. While realistically memorializing the bonds of family – “too much love” – Zidrou makes plain the fallacies of the great-white-savior complex especially associated with transnational adoption. Remarkably combining both raw exposé and familial affirmation, and supremely elevated by Monin’s artwork, Zidrou’s stupendous narrative – translated into English by Jeremy Melloul, from its original French – is a graphic gift to Anglophone readers.
Review: “Graphic Novels,” Booklist, January 1 & 15, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2016-2017 (France), 2021 (United States)