prettyrain's Full Review: Nick Bantock - Sabine's Notebook: The Extraordinar...
In Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine, we're introduced to the two characters by their correspondence with one another. The letters and postcards, some of which you remove from their envelopes to read, are beautiful, original and dreamy. When the book ends we're not exactly sure if Sabine is real or if she's some sor of imaginary playmate Griffin has created. The confusion is scary and intriguing and yeah, we want to know more!
So, here it is. In Sabine's Notebook, the letter writing picks up with Sabine in England, (instead of the Sicmon Islands where she was in the first book), to finally connect with Griffin. She told him that he could not "dismiss a muse at whim." Griffin, in a panic because now he's afraid he's definitely gone mad, flees the scene so that he won't be there when she arrives. If she arrives. He leaves a letter, the first one in this book, that starts with, "If you are reading this, then you exist... If I invented you, then you don't exist. Right. But how then can you still write to me?"
What a wonderful fantasy. To create something, or think you have, and then have it made flesh. And Sabine is not just any something. She's talented, insightful, wise and tender. She understands and accepts everything Griffin does, encourages him, warns him and entertains him.
While Griffin is avoiding the situation at home in England he travels to Ireland, Italy, Egypt, Japan and tries to reach the Sicmon Islands (Sabine's home). Again the text is full of their cards to one another -- beautiful stationery (mostly one of a kind) with surreal artwork and stamps from the various Islands that Sabine has designed herself.
The cards she sends to Griffin are laid out on pages from her "notebook" that include sketches, notes about what she wants to tell Griffin and notes like "a lonely wolf lonelier than the angels." Again I was tempted to cut out images from the book (though I would never!) and frame them. Or just carry them around with me. Again I wanted to -be- Sabine -- spending her days sketching in the museums, churches and visiting England's countryside.
And Griffin, we wonder for his sanity. Is he crazy? Or is he a genius who has access to worlds we don't know of? Maybe both? Could he be sending these to himself? How is it that Sabine is so different from him, yet they are able to see one another's art as it is created?
When you read the book and see the drawings, painting and read the letters you will believe all of it. Sabine exists. She and Griffin are in love. Two beautiful souls will surely find one another.
Griffin & Sabine, the most creative and discussed bestseller of 1991, left readers on the edge of a precipice. In the second volume of this inventiive...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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