The Arrival has no words, it’s all pictures (must be the easiest book to translate). And I almost have no words to describe it, because it’s so overwhelmingly good. The drawings, the imagination, it’s so out of this world that you feel you are transported to this magical majestic place.

Amazing amazing work.

The Arrival is a story about a man who leaves his family to a foreign place, to a new world for, like most if not all immigrants, a better life. ‘Strangers in strange lands’ is best to describe the theme.

The foreign-ness of the place, the sense of not belonging, the awe of seeing a different world, the strangeness of everyday’s details. It’s captured very well.

In fact, the wordlessness strengthens it.

I felt like I was watching a foreign movie with no subtitle. Or reading a book in a language I don’t understand. This is something I can really relate to– trying to find meanings in gesture, expression and body language. And that’s what the man in the story is trying to do too. I can understand his hardships. It’s like we’re trying to find our way together and are equally surprised with the unfamiliar.

What else can I say? Shaun Tan is a genius in expressing himself with visual art. I’m a huge fan. The Arrival is perfect for its kind.

I gave my dad the book to read. He finished it and said, spot on. This comes from a real live immigrant.

From shauntan.net:

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.

If you have read the book (or even if you haven’t), I encourage you to read Tan’s comments on The Arrival (it’s at the bottom after the series of pictures).

2006, 128 pp

I also reviewed another of his book: Tales from Outer Suburbia just last month, which I also gave perfect score. How biased am I?

Awards
2007 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Book of the Year and Community Relations Commission Award
Nominated for 2008 Hugo Award Best Related Book and Best Professional Artist

Also reviewed by

Tripping Toward Lucidity | Ready When You Are, C.B. | OF Blog of the Fallen | ReadingAdventures | Blogging for a Good Book | Ticket to Anywhere | Stuff As Dreams Are Made On | Library Queue (with the most comprehensive awards list!) | avidbookreader.com | Rebecca Reads | 1morechapter.com

I watched the movie a long time ago. I only remembered there was some contest with swimming and maze, then someone died. I watched the movie again after I read this book on weekend, and thought it just sucked. There are so many little details in the book that they just had to take out to squeeze everything in into a couple of hours. No wonder I didn’t remember much about the movie. It just isn’t that good. The effects weren’t easy to make as well, so they took out a lot of stuff, otherwise the movie would be too expensive to make. I wish (and partly predict) that in 10 years time they would work on remake of Potter movies, and this time longer, including many more details, containing a lot more magical effects. For example, in 10 years time it’d probably easier to make Dobby the house-elf so they don’t have to take him out.

So let me see, the things they took out in Goblet of Fire are: Dobby and Winky the house-elves, Ludo Bagman, Sirius, Hogwart’s kitchen (I’d love to see this one!), the whole SPEW subplot – I love this one too, Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Skrewts, the Sphinx in the maze (I wanna see this one!), and heaps of other details like names of books they read, Rita Skeeter’s news, the whole Ron and Hermione’s fights – which I found very endearing, Hagrid’s and Madame Maxime’s love story and giant identity, and so on.

I found that the movie always reveals the identity of the bad guy far too quickly. I guess it’s sort of understandable. If they put it off too long, nobody would know what’s going on since they took out a lot of things out. Like in this movie they revealed Barty Crouch’s son from the first minutes, all the way through until the end. In Prisoner of Azkaban, they revealed Peter Pettigrew somewhere in the middle of the movie. That just ruins everything! The thing that make HP interesting is that it works like a wondrous jigsaw puzzle from beginning til the end, and they all fit only at the very end. I always think that the climax is very satisfying, when everything comes together in unpredictable result.

Well looks like this review is more about the comparison of the book and the movie..
Anyway, before I forgot, in Chamber of Secrets, the movie took out degnoming of the Burrow’s garden and DeathDay (I want this!). In Prisoner of Azkaban, they took out Crookshanks’ role completely (I wish there’s more of him in the movie, including Ron and Hermione’s fight for Scabber and Crookshank).

For the characters, Snape is portrayed much nicer in the movie than in the book. And I don’t really like some of Hermione’s reactions in the movie, like crying when she fought with Ron. She’s not supposed to cry! That’s like missing the whole point!

Pages: 786
Rating: 5 out of 5 [Masterpiece]
I love love love the book. Best Harry Potter by far. Can’t wait to read more.

First line

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it ‘the Riddle House’, even thought it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.

Last line

As Hagrid had said, what would come, would come … and he would have to meet it when it did.