As Fred begins lecturing his friends, we frequently get flashbacks of Girtin's actual life and see the story unfold. Which is very welcome because Fred is pretty dry when it comes relating Girtin's biography! While Sarah and Arturo do take an interest in the artist, they certainly not as passionate about researching him as Fred and that leads them down tangental conversations about their work, relationships, etc. They begin meeting in settings outside the bar after painting classes, and get to know each other better. For various, independent reasons, they decide to all take a trip to Manchester to try to resolve some lingering personal concerns.
I had originally bought this hoping to learn more about Girtin. And it certainly has a decent biography of the man. But I found that to actually be the least interesting part of the book. Not that Girtin's life was uninteresting, but that I found myself more interested in the three friends. In part because of who they outwardly are, but more intriguingly because of who they are inwardly.
Having said that, you might think they're all masking somehow and none of them are showing who they really are, but that's not really the case. What I mean is that we readers are privvy to their respective trains of thought and, more significantly, we're able to hear those thoughts more or less simultaneously while they're experiencing the same thing. During class, for example, all the students are standing at their respective easels painting the day's model quietly to themselves. But each of the protagonists are thinking radically different thoughts. Arturo is often very actively considering his linework and coloring; Fred is often rehearsing conversations he hopes to have, and Sarah is wracked with guilt and self-doubt about her relationships. (All her relationships, mind you, not just romantic ones.) And it's this direct comparison of thoughts that I find most interesting.
When we see people on the street or at the store or whatever, we're generally in the same space as them and experiencing more or less the same things. But our reactions can be radically different, perhaps because of our specific proximity, perhaps because of our backgrounds, perhaps because of whatever it is that we're most immediately worried about. And you can't necessarily tell that from anyone's outward expressions. Their thoughts could wander all over the place and if they're going through the motions of painting or walking to work or some other mundane task, and you'd never know what's weighing on them.
We've certainly seen this in comics before. Even in such banal instances as a group of superheroes encountering a villain and one might think, "At last, a chance to prove myself!" and another might be thinking, "Oh, no! They beat pretty badly last time!" and yet another might be immediately considering the various ways to take out the villain quickly. But what Zárate has done, I think, is give the characters all very individual personalities which very much inform their thought patterns. We learn a great deal about them via the incredibly natural-sounding inner monologues they're conducting, ones that frequently are nearly completely removed from the actual conversations they're in the middle of. It's really insightful to show all three characters in this manner, particularly as we frequently see them reacting to the same things at the same times. What is it that takes their attention away from what's going on in front of them, and what does it take to bring them back to whatever that is?
The Girtin biography is interesting, and I appreciate the reproductions of his work that are included (some enlarged over some lovely gatefolds). I definitely got out of the book what I was hoping to. But the additional character studies of Fred, Sarah, and Arturo wound up being infinitely more interesting to me, both from the perspective seeing them as characters as well as the technical expertise Zárate displayed in relaying their stories.
The book, as I said, came out a couple years ago so it should be available from any noted bookseller. It does retail at $39.99 US but as a a nearly four-hundred page hardcover, that strikes me as reasonable. The book was published by Self Made Hero as part of their Art Masters line.
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