The River at Night

July 15, 2019
Huizenga (Gloriana) sidles up again to his slightly dazed everyman character Glenn Ganges in this unexpectedly poignant, and occasionally magical, graphic novel. In the opening sequence, word balloons cluster over a town, and one rises above the clouds before disintegrating; it’s like a storyboard for an unfinished film, and it speaks to the ever-pressing consciousness of the humanity around Ganges and his own overflowing mind. There’s a short bit about Glenn’s work at a doomed website in the dot-bomb era, which starts in Douglas Coupland–esque irony and ends in sweetly sad longing. The bulk of the book, though, is a loopy night-circus in which Glenn regrets that pot of coffee he made before bed. Page after dreamy page of “Pink Elephants”–like muzzy fantasy flips by. Glenn’s mind is packed with jangled anxieties about to-do lists, meta-self-referencing, half-digested memories of fights with his wife, endlessly looping halls of mirrors, and long reveries on the suburban night that echo Magritte’s Empire of Light series. While Huizenga’s architectural, fine-line style is clearly influenced by Chris Ware, and his slacker-ish framing (anxious creative types searching for meaning) evokes countless other indie comic artists, the vast spaciousness of this surreal night flight is all his own. Glenn’s reveries will pull readers into multiple deserved rereadings.

September 27, 2019

While walking to the local library, Glenn Ganges contemplates time travel and the nature of consciousness. He spots a boy littering on the side of the road and can't resist conjuring alternately angry and deeply empathetic rationales for the child's behavior. Later that night, he reads a book and argues about pop music with his wife, Wendy, before bed. After Wendy falls asleep, Glenn discovers that he's far too restless to settle down, thus beginning a staggeringly intense, brilliantly conceived and expertly executed sequence of vignettes that perfectly capture the experience of enduring a long, sleepless night. Images and associations swirl and recur in unexpected ways as Glenn's thoughts dart from memories of becoming addicted to a first-person shooter videogame while working for an Internet startup in the late 1990s to his teenage reading habits to reflections on various abstractions to paranoia at what might be lurking in the darkness outside his home and beyond. VERDICT There's little plot and the stakes are low, but that doesn't stop this latest from the accomplished Huizenga (Curses) from being a remarkably intelligent, playful, at times actually stressful, and thoroughly relatable reading experience like nothing else.--Tom Batten, Grafton, VA

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