A review by foggy_rosamund
The Trojan Women: A Comic by Euripides, Anne Carson

5.0

This is Carson's interpretation of Euripides' The Trojan Women, as illustrated by Rosanna Bruno. Plays and comics have a lot in common, both being forms that marry the visuals and dialogue, and both can work with broad or small palettes. Rosanna Bruno's illustrations are loose, spontaneous and gestural: they give the play a sense of immediacy, as though the action is taking place right now, almost too quickly to be captured. Though many of the interpretations of characters are quirky or unexpected, such as Andromache appearing as a poplar sapling, or Athene as a pair of overalls, Bruno captures the poignancy of these images, as well as their irony. Carson's interpretation of this story is also admirable: her poetry is vivid and clear, and captures the atmosphere of a city devastated by war. It feels brutally relevant: these characters wait in a camp for their future to be decided by forces beyond their control, unable to protect their children. Carson presents the facts starkly and without authorial comment, making the story feel both immediate and eternal. Though there are imperfections both in the text and in the images, overall I thought this was an impressive achievement, much more so than many of the other modern interpretations of the women of Troy.