There, in Charlotte Square, it celebrates the small, but very interesting, Edinburgh International Book Festival. Walking through it a year ago, in a typical rainy day, I found the first edition of "Things to do in a retirement home Trailer Park" by Aneurin Wright. It is a large thick volume illustrated, whose drawings are made exclusively with four colors: white, black, red and blue. It showed as one of the main novelties of the Festival.
This exceptional story, subtitled "... When You're 29 and Unemployed", I really liked it, both for telling a story and interesting, and for the originality of his characters accompanied by the brilliant skill of its author. A strongly recommended book.
Text. - José Juan Barba.
First contact I had with this book was working with José Juan. I arrived at the office like any other day and it was there, above my table space. To my surprise it was a comic book, I took a quick look and I could see it was full of vignettes in which appeared its cartoon, a unique creature, kind of giant bull. Where was it going to lead? I could not guess it by its title: "Things to do in Retirement Home trailer Park".
In all months I have been working in Metalocus, I have been more focused to freelance & illustrator artwork by artists and I had not found a case similar to Nye. He is who writes and tells its own story, and who also gives image and color to the work. 8 years of hard work, presented with a palette of blue, red and black, carefully chosen, to design a book about his own life and circumstances that makes it change radically.
I have you to thank Nye, who has been willing to write us, on a very personal tone, this brief explanation about who he is him, and the history behind his book.
Text.- Laura Canto
"My father was an architect. My earliest memories are of him stood at a vast drafting table, listening to classical music on the radio and whistling as he drew. It always seemed so peaceful and wonderful to me. As he had a large closet full of drawing and office supplies, I had ready access to materials to make what I wanted.
In 1978, when I was 5, I went to see "Superman the Movie". I was amazed and had dreams about being able to fly for years afterward. When I realised that, sadly, I couldn't fly like Superman, I started drawing pictures of him. I even had a series of pictures that I wanted to be "really real" so I borrowed some of my father's cologne and sprayed them so that they would even smell like a real live man.
Hands were always very difficult for me to draw so whenever I drew Superman, he would be flying, but the paper would end just below his wrists so that I wouldn't have to draw the hands. One day, my father taped a piece of paper to the end of my drawing and told me not to get up until I had drawn the hands. He was hard worker with his own drawing and thought I ought to be too.
In his later years, my father became ill with emphysema because he smoked for many years. At the end of his life, he needed full time care. I found myself unemployed with no other prospects so I moved in with and became my father's full time carer for the last 6 months of his life. The experience was scary, profound, exhilarating, boring, hilarious and tragic. I spent the next 8 years writing and drawing a graphic novel about it called "Things to do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park... When You're 29 and Unemployed."
I currently draw a weekly comic strip for the UK national book chain Waterstones. It is about great authors of the past travelling through a wormhole in spacetime to the present to come pitch their books to the reader of the future, my five month old baby girl, Sprout."
Text.- Aneurin Wright.
Synopsis.-
When Nye's father phones to wish him a happy birthday, and reveals he has been ‘certified for hospice’, Nye slumps down on the nearest doorstep in shock. Unemployment means that he is free to move in to the trailer park where his father lives, and assume the role of chief carer. Their daily schedule of pill counting and medical checks unfolds into an extraordinary world where the protagonist is a minotaur, his father a rhinoceros, social workers are sea turtles and mobile homes move atop gigantic elephants. Curious neighbours and medical and social care workers – whether man or beast – become their friends, and the family comes together once more.
