Death of the Artist

Five Artists. Five Styles. All Written by One Author

'Blown away by Death of the Artist by Karrie Fransman. A unique work of art - [a] sublimely funny and moving graphic novel.

Karrie Fransman studied Psychology and Sociology at university and began writing her first graphic stories after reading Ghost World. She’s created comics for the Guardian, The Times, the Telegraph, New Statesman, Time Out and Psychologies Magazine. Her first book, The House that Groaned, was published by Square Peg in 2012. 
www.karriefransman.com

Five Artists. Five Styles. All Written by One Author 
 
On 13 August 2013 graphic novelist Karrie Fransman invited four old friends from university to an isolated cottage on the misty moors of the Peak District to join her for a week of hedonism and creativity. Like Shelley and Byron before them, they would use the retreat to tell stories. Except these would be comics, collected together in this very book. The theme? The Death of the Artist. 
 
None of the five friends realised how appropriate this theme would become. 
 
The book weaves a single narrative across watercolour, digital art, photography, collage and illustration, exploring the themes of creation, destruction, and how we kill our inner artists as we grow up. It takes the graphic novel into entirely new realms.

Karrie Fransman

In a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy…and a cautionary tale. Anyone who has ever lain in bed at night listening to the sound of unknown voices on the other side of the cardboard wall will relish the way she lets her imagination off its leash…funny…beautiful looking…this book might almost be alive

An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade

A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive

Karrie Fransmen breaks all the rules of storytelling accumulated over the past thousands of years. She creates a confusion at first, then bursts into the obvious and simplest fact; that all the stories of and in our lives are personal and private.... The only way this wonderful book could have been written is by illustration...not by word... rather like the hidden stories drawn on the walls of caves

Nicolas Roeg, director of Don't Look Now and Walkabout

Fransman's dual background as a psychology and sociology student and a creative advertiser helps underpin her skills at both characterisation and communication… By its melodramatic finales, The House That Groaned acknowledges some scars that miss their chance to heal, but also gives us a kind of happy ending for two tenants

You can't help but be by turns moved and repulsed by the inhabitants of 141 Rottin Road. But beneath their outrageous behaviour and serious hang-ups, they still have a touching humane side that we can all relate to, with their issues with body image, loneliness and pitiful attempts to overcome past traumas that have shaped the people they have become. I'm not usually a huge fan of graphic novels because I find them too shallow with superficial, stereotypical characters but that is certainly not true of The House That Groaned. Love it or hate it, you will be thinking about the characters long after you've turned the final page

The House That Groaned is a graphic novel that explores bodies and the spaces they inhabit. 
 
It is set in an old Victorian tenement housing six lonely individuals who could only have stepped out of the pages of a comic book. There is the retoucher who cannot touch, a grandmother who literally blends into the background and a twenty-something bloke who's sexually attracted to diseased women. 
 
Yet, as we learn the stories behind these extreme characters, it becomes apparent that we may share simlar issues - as individuals and as a society.

Karrie Fransman

Praise for The House that Groaned

In a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy…and a cautionary tale. Anyone who has ever lain in bed at night listening to the sound of unknown voices on the oth ...

An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade

A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive

In a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy…and a cautionary tale. Anyone who has ever lain in bed at night listening to the sound of unknown voices on the oth ...

An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade

A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive

In a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy…and a cautionary tale. Anyone who has ever lain in bed at night listening to the sound of unknown voices on the oth ...

An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade

A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive

Books by Karrie Fransman

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