NOTE: This is a review of the recent Drawn & Quarterly reissue, since there’s no Goodreads entry for that.
Infidelity is a tough nut to crack, story-wise. It’s hard for a reader to sympathize with a protagonist who lies to, cheats on, and betrays their family, particularly if they seem like otherwise perfectly nice people. That’s the problem with Anneli Furmark’s first graphic novel to be translated into English, the icy and intimate “Red Winter.” Siv has a pleasant, unremarkable husband and a curious teenage daughter and they seem happy, yet she insists on carrying on an affair with Ulrik, a young and passionate Communist. Romantic and political tensions simmer throughout “Red Winter” but Furmark never really brings the whole thing to a boil.
Barren, frigid Sweden seems like an appropriate setting for a comic about the loneliness and isolation that can grow in a marriage; there’s a coldness and a feeling of detachment that blankets the pages like fresh snowfall. Maybe it’s because John Ajvide Lindqvist’s exquisite vampire fable “Let The Right One In” is set in the same type of environment, but I also felt a current of dread running through “Red Winter.” Or maybe watching a family collapse is innately nerve-wracking. Regardless, the book has a lot of buildup but not a lot of payoff. Political conversations meander, secret rendezvous fizzle, and the book just sort of ends suddenly. Furmark’s art is beautiful, however: subtly-colored, sketchy, and appropriately analog; it would be jarring to see a story like this illustrated in an obviously digital style.
Supposedly this comic is the third volume of a trilogy about Siv and Ulrik so - who knows? - it’s very possible that I can’t appreciate it without some more context. “Red Winter” certainly seems to begin and end pretty abruptly. As is, this version feels incomplete though, honestly, I didn’t care enough about the characters and their misdeeds to want to know more.