Imperial Purple

Shaun Tan
Tales from Outer Suburbia
Allen & Unwin 2008

In a previous review I gave Shaun Tan five out of five for The Arrival. Tales from Outer Suburbia does not quite achieve such heights but it is still an excellent book.

It contains fifteen stories, all set more or less in the suburbs of an unspecified city and all told in Tan’s gentle and often surreal style. The off-beat nature of his vision serves to increase rather than diminish the humanity of his subjects. His artwork is, of course, superb.

In any book of stories there will be some you like more than others. Some, such as Broken Toys and Stick Figures are downright creepy. Some, like Our Expedition and Grandpa’s Story are little slices of life - not perhaps completely within what we would call normality but insightful. Eric is a beautiful, poignant little story and I loved The Water Buffalo.

There are lots of others to love but there were a few I felt didn’t work so well. When he strays into satire with The Amnesia Machine and Alert but not Alarmed he loses his sure touch although I did like what people did with their ICBMs in the latter. With Wake he lets anger take over and for me this did not work as well as his normal oblique approach.

Because of these (for me) little glitches I can only (!) give it four stars. I do recognise that others might disagree with me and think it should have been four and a half and I wouldn’t object at all. It is not the work of genius that is The Arrival but it is a damn fine book. A worthy addition to any library.