This gorgeous graphic novels makes an immediate impressive with the quality and detail of the illustrations. Each frame is an individual, hand painted beauty portraying landscapes and cityscapes with equal elegance. Sunsets, light and shade, mountains, oceans, nightscapes and weather are brought to life. Tante Wussi is, above all, a beauty thing to behold. At first it overwhelms the story. You can take your time over each frame to enjoy the details. Particularly the lush images of Mallorca are very striking. Then, slowly, the low-key storytelling creeps in.
Bacher has no tricks or great ambitions with the form of her story. It is an autobiography framed as a story told to her by her aunt, whose family left their new home on Mallorca and returned, with unfortunate timing, to pre-war Germany. As her mother has is Jewish, the family is forced to splinter. We follow the narrator's youth, the gradual separation of family members, her gradual isolation. She finds some peace and safety in the countryside under the protection of relatives, but stories of disappearances and losses follow her and haunt her. The story isn't dramatically or even expertly told, but it is dotted with moments of authority and clarity that make it carry a quiet weight. As well as that there is a lightness, a beauty and an absence of anger that makes Tante Wussi a touching memoir.
But the best moments are better highlighted by the images - a ferry boat sinking into the sunset, the Mallorcan coast, a field of snow with a single snow angel at its centre, Bunyola train station, train pulling in, lights out over the ocean, a girl standing under an autumn tree. The book ends fittingly - quiet and unassuming but with a powerful choice of scene. After a tale of war and past suffering we are shown a glimpse of a modern day anti-Islam protest by the far-right, a simplistic but effective comparison and a silent warning that hatred and discrimination are far from defeated in our society. 7