by Gengoroh Tagame (Blackfriars Books, ISBN 978 0 349 13457 4)
Chunky, hairy and cuddly Canadian, Mike Flanagan turns up at the door of Yiachi, a divorcee who is bringing up his young daughter, Kana. Mike declares that he is the widower of Yiachi’s estranged gay twin brother. What follows in this remarkable and delightful graphic novel is the story of how Yiachi has to rethink his assumptions about what makes a family, about sexuality, and about how he treated his late brother. Leading him in his painful and difficult education is his sparky and perceptive young daughter, Kana. Manga artist Gengoroh Tegame’s spare but deftly expressive style, captures the nuances in a stunning and highly imaginative way. Feelings and states of minds are conveyed with the simplest of lines, shifts of perspective, angle, proportion. So is the social context and attitudes towards sexual non-conformity in contemporary Japan. Moving, sometimes hilarious – and simply brilliant.
