Absence
Creative Team
writer/illustrator: MARIO CAU
publisher: SELF PUBLISHED
Written by Adromat
Among the musical notes, the bar chatter, and the rustling of leaves, Mario Cau invites the reader to reflect on those deep, quiet feelings that emerge from sincere love and longing.
Written and illustrated by Cau, ‘Absence’ is a collection of fragmentary stories, whose readers are only ever privy to the 'after-the-fact': what comes after loss in a family; after love has departed. These 'missing pieces' can be as short as a page, but their brevity is never at the cost of emotional or artistic richness. Scenes feel inhabited and characters resonate easily—in no small part due to Cau's sprawling, gestural drawings.
Subject matters and characters in these fragments will seem familiar to readers (the pangs felt when a friend moves away; the caring grandmother). Nonetheless, stories are never at risk of becoming stale: only enough context is ever given to 'catch the reader up.' What the reader chooses to make of these pieces, how she or he reconstructs the missing ones, is what keeps 'Absence' fresh.
Cau's hatched, stark black-and-white artwork reaches its heights when paired with the dramatic peaks of the stories. A dimly lit room at 1 AM, or a human figure made of whistled tunes, fruits—and pasta! Cau's art pivots between the ordinary and surreal gracefully.
At other times, however, the lack of midtones or other depth indicators might have one searching for the proper contours before a page can be fully understood.
'Saudade,' as Portuguese speakers know, is one of those untranslatable (but ever felt) emotions in all our lives. In 'Absence,' Cau distills just that feeling into picture and word, bridging linguistic gaps and reminding us of the boundless potential of the comics medium.
