The House

The House by Paco Roca
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When their father dies, three Spanish siblings visit the family vacation home to fix it up before selling it.

The House won an Eisner award but I didn't pick it up until the stars were right, more specifically, when my Fantagraphics February stack started getting dangerously low in the middle of the month.

At first glance, nothing about this jumps out at me. There are no murders, no one punching each other, no cursing, no super villains, not even teens going to a malt shop. However, it's a damn good tale.

Jose, Vicente, and Carla each have beefs with the old man and with each other but share fond memories of their father and the house they all constructed together on the weekends. As they fix up the house, some old resentments bubble to the surface like methane in a swamp.

Paco Roca's art is on the minimalist side of the spectrum but he rides that pony hard, getting great expressions with just a few pen strokes, as well as drawing cityscapes and vegetation. The guy can draw is what I'm getting at.

Some of the panel arrangements were a little hard to navigate. The book is wider than it is tall, lending to some interesting layouts. Some panels read top to bottom and others read left to right, even on the same page. Once I got the hang of it, it was fine. Roca is also great at using establishing shots of the house and surrounding environs to set the mood, like the dying fig tree or the rock wall that has fallen down.

Short and sweet, The House is a minimalist masterpiece about accepting the loss of a loved one and getting over the past. Four out of five figs.

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