This review first appeared at Green Man Review.
Unlike many of my colleagues here at GMR, my experience with the work of Jane Yolen has been limited, although I’m happy to report that what experience I have had has been very positive. That, coupled with the fact that I’ve turned into a comics freak, made it inevitable that I would jump at the chance to take a peek at her new book, Foiled, a graphic novel about a teenager who is an expert swordsman — among other things.
Aliera Carstairs is in high school. As if that weren’t enough of a trial on its own, she’s not particularly outgoing, not particularly pretty, nor particularly scholarly. She is, however, a very talented fencer, definitely headed to the nationals, and soon. Her practice weapon (and it’s a “weapon,” not a “sword”) is a foil her mother found at a tag sale for two dollars. Its only flaw is the large fake ruby glued to the pommel, although strangely enough, that doesn’t seem to affect the balance.
The pretty one in this story is Avery Castle, the new boy in school. Avery is not only pretty, he’s got muscles and a gorgeous smile, which he seems to bestow on any girl who crosses his line of sight. The feet of clay start showing when Avery and Aliera are paired in biology class — Mr. Potter always pairs people alphabetically — and it comes time to dissect the frog. (You remember the frog, don’t you?) Avery volunteers to do the cutting — he likes cutting up dead things. And then he asks Aliera on a date.
Yolen’s script is right on target. Aliera narrates this story, and she’s as close to a real teenager as I’ve ever seen in fiction. Fencing becomes the metaphor for Aliera’s negotiation of the minefield of adolescence, particularly her coach’s admonition that “You must always protect your heart.” And her regular Saturday evening routine — role-playing games with her cousin Caroline, confined to a wheelchair — adds another dimension to that: Caroline is always the Queen, and Aliera the Defender (which turns out to be more than a game role).
This being a story by Jane Yolen, you might guess that there’s an element of fantasy in here somewhere. You’d be right, although it comes out in the middle of Grand Central Station, of all places. And of course, none of it — the “fake” ruby on the foil, Avery, and Aliera as Defender — are coincidental. One thing that strikes me in retrospect is the simple fact that when push comes to shove, and the prince turns into something less acceptable than a frog, Aliera doesn’t handle it perfectly. She manages well enough, but she’s still a kid, with that set of awkwardness and half-formed social skills. It’s fantasy with a very strong basis in reality.
Mike Cavallaro’s art is somewhat more than apt, and is pretty much unclassifiable: Cavallaro uses a reductive style that recalls manga as much as anything in Western comics, an impression reinforced by his intuitive and somewhat freewheeling approach to page design. And one gets the distinct feeling that the pages are designed: some of the spreads are highly abstract and very beautiful. The effect is pointed up by the expert use of tone. Aliera is colorblind, and Cavallaro makes very intelligent use of a range of grayed shades of blue-green to reinforce her point of view.
There are transformations — in Avery, in Aliera, and in her world — but that would be giving things away, so I’m not going to tell you about it. I’ll just say that sometimes it’s hard to tell the princes from the trolls. (I’m sure we’ve all had that experience.) Maybe that’s the real lesson we learn growing up.
(First Second Books, 2010)
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