The Hunting Accident by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair ****

Reading dates: 1 January – 13 October 2024

After reading Alison Bechdel’s The Secret to Superhuman Strength on Sunday mornings with my second coffee, I craved the experienced so I finally got on to reading my friend Landis Blair’s wonderful work. I have been looking forward to Sundays at home, with nothing to do in the mornings. These times are precious to me because now that I teach on these days, they are very hard to come by.

The Hunting Accident is a complex story of various timelines and it is expertly told both in the writing and arranging, and visually. I appreciated both but being visually oriented I spent longer with the images. The story made me read Dante’s Divine Comedy and I am already half way through Inferno. Carlson and Blair’s meticulous work gives me context for Dante as, before, I would have dismissed it as either too hard or too poetic (I know!). With Matt Rizzo’s story in the background of my mind, I am not only enjoying it, but understanding it a lot better – or perhaps more peacefully, without wanting to grab meaning.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this graphic novel to anyone: is is beautiful, a really well-told, interesting story, and an achievement it itself. Why not then 5-stars? I did not feel I wanted to re-read it straight away, but my one read will, I know, stay with me and nourish other literary pursuits as it is already happening with The Divine Comedy.