Especially, about yesterday’s gossip, about the memories our parents share with us so we almost come to think that they are our memories too. The intimate folklore of family. Gilbert Hernandez’ family, of course, is not my family, or your family, but this kind of folklore has a cross-cultural similarity, most of all in cultures where people often find themselves short of a bob. Families, particularly extended families – and the families in Heartbreak Soup are often stretched to the limit – flourish best in small towns. This involves Gilbert Hernandez in a celebration of small-town life. In the very small town of Palomar (population 356), the narratives of its inhabitants’ lives weave in and out of each other with the same claustrophobic compulsiveness of the lives in the marvellous novels of Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, The Beet Queen), set in remote townships in the American mid-West. The novel composed of interwoven small-town lives has a long tradition in the United States.
What do You think about Expletives Deleted (2010)?
