The House that Groaned

Introducing a fresh and utterly original new star in the graphic novel world.

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

141 Rottin Road 
'A cosy, one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a charming Victorian conversion. Newly decorated and with a separate kitchen and reception room. Located just a bus ride away from a wide range of shops, restaurants and bars.' 
 
Welcome to The House that Groaned and the six lonely inhabitants of its separate flats, characters so at odds with themselves and their bodies that they could only have stepped out of the pages of a comic novel. There's Barbara, our make-up artist heroine and man-made blonde bombshell; Matt, the photographic retoucher who can't touch; Janet, the tormented dietician; twenty-something Brian, the diseaseophile whose sexual penchant takes him to the edge of perversion; old Mrs Durbach, who literally blends in to the background; and the gloriously fleshy and hedonistic Marion, matriarch of the Midnight Feasters. Behind the house's anonymous facade, the building is decaying. As pipes explode and walls collapse, events force the residents out of their doors and into each others lives - with dramatic consequences. 
 
Exploring the themes of body image, sexuality and the loneliness and isolation of contemporary urban life, The House that Groaned is a modern-day fairy tale full of magic realism and farcical symbolism which will woo both comic fans and attract new readers to the medium.

Karrie Fransman's autobiographical comic strips 'My Peculiar World' were published in the Guardian's G2, and her graphic story, 'The Night I Lost my Love' was published in the Times in 2010. She also makes Comic Apps and sculptures and her work has been exhibited in London, Belgium and Russia. She runs projects at the London Print Studio and House of Illustration. Born in Edinburgh, Karrie now lives in London in a house not dissimilar to the one in her book. You can see more of her work at www.karriefransman.com

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

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

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

Praise for Death of the Artist

A playful metatextual layering

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

Genre-busting.

A playful metatextual layering

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

Genre-busting.

A playful metatextual layering

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

Genre-busting.

Books by Karrie Fransman

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter