The Lighthouse

January 30, 2017
At the start of this graphic novel set in the Spanish civil war, Francisco, a young Republican soldier, is separated from his unit and fleeing Franco’s men. After reaching an old lighthouse on the ocean, he collapses from his wounds and wakes to finds himself rescued and tended to by the lighthouse keeper, Telmo, a burly old spinner of tales. While Francisco recovers at his surprise seaside sanctuary, Telmo builds a fantastical boat in order to take a journey to an even more fantastical-sounding island. Soon, even the prematurely cynical Francisco starts falling for Telmo’s tales of mythic adventures and imagines that anything is possible. Like a lighter kind of Guillermo del Toro story in which the fantasy elements—neatly delivered here in Roca’s sharp, duotone style—play a counterpoint to the black-and-white harshness of the war, Roca’s slim and affecting novel expertly channels its characters’ desires for a grander and more forgiving world. But, like his earlier Wrinkles, this story knows that yearning for escape doesn’t make it happen.