Fiction

This book is Through the Woods by Emily Carroll.


Who was this book intended for?  This book has some honestly quite creepy and horror-esque content so its probably not advisable for younger audiences, however beyond this it is perfect for those who enjoy the horror genre, as well as keen readers of short stories or graphic novel style books.
What drew you to the book? When I bought it in Waterstones, the reason it appealed to me was the cover with the limited colour palette of black white and red. This to me suggested the horror genre straight away, and as this is something I'm interested in I decided to pick it up. Once I had it in my hand, the textured cover really did it for me, its slightly grainy and feels a little unsettling but also quite tactile. The paper quality also had similarities to the papers often used in graphic novels, slick and glossy. I think the fact this was such an unusual item to come across in Waterstones made it seem all the more special to me.
What makes it a success? Not only are the stories in this seriously gripping, but the fact that they're all short stories makes them seem less intimidating and allows you to appreciate the illustrations at the same time as reading the content. The illustrations are structured in a comic book or graphic novel style in that they are in blocks or double page spreads with the corresponding text following along side them. Theres also not a massive amount of text, just key words like you would find in a poem, and I think you can really tell that this is a product made by an illustrator as I would say although words and images both play a part, the words are just there to help give the images a bit of context.
What failings does it have? Although I am biased as this book is one of my current favourite pieces of illustration, one criticism I would give is that although the textured cover gives the book a lovely finish, the fact its made of paper of a medium thickness means that the more you read the book, the more fanned out the pages go as they're not being held down by the cover. I appreciate this is just being very picky though for people like me who like to keep their best books as neat as possible. The actual illustrations are very fluid and free in some places and whilst I think this looks amazing and gives a dream like, spiritual quality to the book, it can also make some pages very hard to understand.