Book Review: Moonshine and Magnolias

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The purpose of Moonshine and Magnolias by Biswajit Basu is not to educate. The cartoons are minimalist. The author’s sole attention was on storytelling. The images are like screenshots taken right out of life. Sometimes they are about day-to-day events, sometimes they are just general reflections on life and people. The drawings are in black and white and done with minimum number of scratches. There are no political cartoon in this book. However, there are some insinuations about the present political mood prevailing in the country.  

The book is mostly autobiographical. Some cartoons in Moonshine and Magnolias are introspective and often self-deprecating. “The author is evidently inspired by minimalist cartoonists like Sarah Anderson and Alvin Juano,” remarked one reader, “There are a few words that are originally in local language and no attempt was made to either translate or explain them, probably to retain the local flavour.” The book doesn’t fit the charming class of graphic novels. It is rather a collection of short stories presented in graphical form. This is why the book may seem to have ended as abruptly as it started. Here are the opinions of some of the first few readers of this book,

“Some of the stories are infantile. The author misses his childhood. Probably we all do.”

-          Prasun Bannerji

“The only complain I have about it is that it’s too short. I wish it had 50 more pages.”

-          Baisakhi Maitra

But the most interesting review that we received was probably this,

“The book is full of shit. But it’s good shit.”

-          Rahul Srivastava

The reason for getting such varied opinion is that the book doesn’t deal with a particular topic. Like the author said in the description of this book, “MOONSHINE AND MAGNOLIAS is an attempt to make life look bit more nonsensical than it appears to be.” Perhaps there is a subtle philosophy underlying the funny appearance. The things that we keep ourselves occupied with, are actually pointless. It is as if life is a mechanical system full of glitches we call ironies. The best thing we can do is to grease its gears with our sense of humor.

  

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