Kozumi's Quote of the Week:

"The Game Master is a tory scum!"
--Cowboy Neil, Geeks in Space ep. 31 (Goodbye Geek Compound)

Dio: "I am Sega Dreamcast. I am looking into your brain."
Aro (whispers): "It's thinking...." That's the Dreamcast ad, right?
Syndelin: Yeah....
Aro (whispers): "Its out there...."
Dio: Isn't that the X-Files?
Aro: (whispers): "I see dead people...."
Syndelin: Yeah, now you got it.
Dio: Sega Dreamcast--it sees dead people.

Well, its been a while since the last post and things have just gone down the hill in some places. But we all can't let this bring us down. So Emo-Boy, get the hell away from that razor blade. There will be no slitting of the wrists on my watch.

Dio: Cuz I'm tired of cleaning up the blood you guys leave around here. And pick up all these goddamn batons!
Diz: Oookay...now we have the George Carlin quotes.
Lex: Usually we end offensive or something. Now we're starting that way.
Aro: Wow, we're having a good post.

Inha's "next episode" doesn't seem to help us all stay on track. Eventually we'll get to Rya and Aerith's anime personalities/team position list. They're done throwing objects at each other and we just need to run this by Ryori-san for his critiques. Ryo-san, if you're reading this, we're sending this along via e-mail soon. We just need to finalize things. But we will have our regularly scheduled book review. Take it away Inha.

Inha: Well, first we need to give a little background about this.
Rya: Our hostess lives in an apartment. A few months ago, Dad was taking out the trash. We're just chilling in the living room, Penny and me, reading manga (Chobits, from CLAMP, our lords and savoirs, and Paradise Kiss, by Ai Yazawa) when he comes back *in* with stuff. And not just any stuff--
Diz: But books!! Children's books!
Rya: Right, he comes in with a smack loada books. He says that someone must have just dumped their *entire* library in the trash (well, not the trash, I think they were in boxes next to the dumpster) and now we were rescuing these children's books. For the next hour, we were dumpster diving for books, most of which were in *perfect* condition. I think we scored over three hundred books. Most we packed away for the Salvation Army, elementry schools, the occasional book to get a free pin from the San Francisco Giants games. But some we kept, cuz some were blasts from the past and they still rock to this day.
Diz: "The Secret Garden", "Big Bird Goes to China"--
Lex: Oh my God.
Diz: I'm not kidding.
Inha: Among these books were two that were called "The Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin and Sabine", rather, that was the title of the trilogy and the individual books are called "Griffin and Sabine" and "Sabine's Notebook" respectively. Upon first insspection, these books were very much akin to the Babysitter's Club letters special, in which the aforementioned club's members wrote to each other through letters and postcards. The postcards were printed with their backs and fronts on one page, while the letters were in envelopes glued to the page. You could open up the letters and read them, sometimes there were free little trinkets like friendship bracelets, and this gave you the rebel sense of reading someone else's mail.
The "Griffin and Sabine" books are written in the same way. Written and illustrated by Nick Bantock, the first page of the story is a picture of a postcard of a little parrot and feathers. Turning the page, a young woman writting in brown ink introduces herself as Sabine to a man named Griffin, asking for one of his handmade/drawn postcards. Griffin has never met Sabine, and yet she knows all about his pictures and drawings, including things he has sketched and erased when no one was around. It seems that Sabine can see what Griffin draws, despite her being thousands of miles away. Is Sabine a figment of Griffin's imagination--proof that his isolation is slowly driving him mad--or is she a flesh and blood woman with this amazing power? By the end of the first book ("Griffin and Sabine"), Griffin, frightened by the closeness to Sabine and his impending insanity, flees as Sabine announces that she will come to London, where he lives, to see him, telling him that he "cannot turn [her] into a phantom because [he] is frightened" and he can't simply "dismiss a muse at a whim." On the back of her final postcard is a drawing of two lines converging into a tiny cricle and then into a line off the card, and her las word: "If you will not join me--then I shall come to you."
The enigmatic ending to the book then led to the second in the series, "Sabines' Notebook", where Griffin is now traveling around the world in search of himself and courage to face Sabine, who has now taken up residence in his house. He travels to places like Egypt, Greece, Dublin, and even Japan, all the while, wondering who he is, why he ran, and who Sabine is. After a near death run in when he tries to visit Sabine's homeland, Griffin returns home to meet Sabine, promising her that he will arrive home on July 23, the same day his postcard will arrive. However, when he did, somehow, some way, Sabine is not there. And later, a postcard comes--it is Sabine, who wonders why Griffin didn't arrive on his appointed day, telling him that she waited until the 31st, and begging him to write back.
Unfortunately, I have only two of the three books. Despite searching desperately for the thrird, if there was one, in the slew of books that were rescued, but alas, it was not. I do not know what will happen next but I do hope that Griffin and Sabine do meet. What could be preventing them from meeting? It is quite obvious that they were in the same place at the same time, but were they really? Could Sabine and Griffin be operating under two *different* time continuities? Or maybe two different times? Could there be some cross-time activity going on between them? As far as I've heard, even this detail is left to the readers at the end of the final book.
I was very impressed with the story-telling and the style. Griffin's character was very vivid and clear, as were his motives for leaving at the end of the first book. Sabine was the more enigmatic of the two; she had this mysterious power to see Griffin's drawings, declined in sending a picture of herself, and had this threatening air about her when she decided to come to London. Her disturbing and macabre drawings in her postcards and sometimes background images from "Sabine's Notebook" were interesting and belied a personality darker than she let on. She knows more than she lets on; for a while, you lead yourself to believe that she really is a figment of his imagination. Griffin is more honest with his feelings, he outright tells Sabine what he feels. She is more of his support and gives him advice. Very rarely in her letters to Griffin does she express her feelings; eventually she tells him that she loves him but you never once feel that she is unstable. Almost ethereal, Sabine is the paragon example of support and serentity. She is very sure of everything she does, as opposed to Griffin, who is often uncertain and vvery unstable.
There are times when you think you understand everything but then something changes that. I took Sabine for who she was at first. Then as the first book progressed, I wondered if she was really real or if Griffin was creating her to ease his loneliness. Then, she frightened me with her last postcard. Who is this woman? Is she real? Why can't they meet? Is fate so against them?
Griffin's introspective letters are mostly thoughts that fall in the manic-depressive category. He has some real issues with who he is. At first he said he had no remorse or sadness for his parent's death but his aunt's rocked him hard. Later, he wonders if his lack of emotion is what is some of the cause for his depression. He doesn't understand himself, something most of us can relate to. The key to understanding himself lies within his journey and his trust of Sabine back home. But will his sanity hold in the third book? By missing Sabine when she was (supposedly) in the same place, Griffin may completely lose himself.
The characters are so full of life and 3-dimensional, unusual for a book told entirely in letters and postcards. But, perhaps, that is what makes Griffin and Sabine so real. You read what they are thinking, and this is only a portion of what they really are thinking. However these thoughts are all you need to understand who they are and what's going on. At the core, the story really is all about the love affair through the letters. There's a certain feeling of rebellion and secrecy reading other people's mail. You share their world, even if all you're really doing is reading their letters. It also makes you rethink how the world works, rethink your own relationships. Trust is the only thing that keeps both of them hanging on. Long distance relationships must rely on that. Not only must you trust your partner, but you must also trust yourself. You have to understand yourself. And that's a hard thing to do.
I heartily recommend the "The Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin and Sabine" trilogy and any other books by Nick Bantock. His artwork is breathtaking and his writting is superb. He is a master storyteller, and draws damn well too. The books are a trip and a half, so to speak, but it is best that you read all three in one go. When I get the third and final book, I'll review it too, perhaps I may even review the sequal series as well. I give these books a 6 out of 5.
Lex: Cuz she's just that powerful.
Inha: Damn right.

Diz: Next up on the docket: a slew of quiz results and maybe even a lil poetry.

*Till next time Lunies!*