Britten and Brülightly

"The touchy-feely vibe of Britten and Brülightly, an elegant graphic novel by Hannah Berry, has something to do with its format—the tall, slim, inviting layout of a picture book—but just as much to do with the intimate, even claustrophobic, content of its narrative. Set in London during some uneasy period when it rains without end on men in double-breasted suits and women in berets, the story tracks the metaphysical crisis of Fernández Britten, a melancholy 'private researcher' who has earned the nickname 'the Heartbreaker' for confirming the suspicions of clients who hire him to spy on their cheating lovers. After a career of exposing the bestiality of human nature, Britten longs to uncover a higher truth, the kind that elevates the beast and confers nobility on his own sleazy trade. The morose P.I., whose shadow-rimmed eyes and tiny, pinched mouth convey his despondent state, thinks he’s found his means of redemption when an unhappy heiress hires him to disprove the police investigation’s conclusion that her fiancé’s death was a suicide. Instead of bringing her satisfaction or solace, Britten discovers a truth so ugly that his instinct is to suppress it. But what kind of hero would that make him? It’s the classic existential bind of the postwar detective: a cynical sleuth tries to redeem his soul through a selfless act, only to find that honesty conflicts with an ingrained code of honor. Although Berry has her bit of fun with the genre traditions—notably in the bizarre detail that Britten’s trusted partner, Stewart Brülightly, is (quite literally) a lecherous tea bag that, under stress, infuses in the detective’s waistcoat pocket—she writes in a darkly poetic vein about love and betrayal, deceit and despair, in a plot so complex it would give Raymond Chandler a headache. Unlike the generations of trend-hopping moviemakers and novelists who have reduced the bleak noir sensibility to brutal acts committed in picturesque alleys, Berry uses her pen to capture the spiritual desolation of the human figures in her landscape. The lines of her drawings are sharp and penetrating, the monochromatic colors diluted in tearful washes of blues and blacks as she leans in to catch the insanity in a smile, the mute anger in the snuffing out of a cigarette. But the bravura storytelling device is the perspective, the eerie sense of disorientation as she swoops in to examine a parade of toy cowboys in an empty apartment or draws back to watch the rain lash two faraway figures with a single umbrella. From whichever angle you look at it, the truth doesn’t bear telling in this cold and heartless world."—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"Illustrated with rich, dark, broody ink and watercolor drawings in an oversize format, Britten and Brülightly by British author Hannah berry is a slender tour de force . . . The prose is witty and often poetic, as in this description of an all-night greasy spoon: 'an oily no-man's-land of drowsy static, caught between sleep and wakefulness.' Or witty, as in this description of a religious nut who works in the office next door: 'a mouth that speaks unimpeded by thought.' More than a comic book, this graphic novel gives noir a new dimension."—Hallie Ephron, The Boston Globe

"Fernández Britten, the sunken-eyed P.I. at the center of Hannah Berry's first graphic novel, Britten and Brülightly, actually does want to do good in the world, but being a detective isn't really a way to accomplish that: All he does is tell people awful truths, and it has led him to develop something of a death wish. His horny, irritable partner, Stewart Brülightly, is a bag of tea—literally—which is both a gesture of surreal whimsy and a suggestion that Britten may not be an entirely reliable narrator. Berry's story grabs and gently wrings every noir trope within reach, beginning with the hard-faced babe who hires Britten to prove that her fiancé's death—which sure looked like suicide—was actually foul play. As the detective and his faithful teabag wander through a city where it's almost always drizzling, they encounter sleazy businessmen, uncover a blackmail-and-murder plot so Byzantine it threatens to collapse into a black hole, and sink into inescapable existential despair. (Berry's watercolor palette, heavy on the greens and blues, makes all of her scenery seem residually damp, musty and underlit.) The mystery story gradually inverts itself into an assault on the entire premise of mystery stories—that the discovery of truth brings disinfecting sunlight—as Britten comes to discover that enlightenment and clarity can cause nothing but heartbreak and calamity, and that 'absolute morality is a luxury for the short-sighted.'"—Douglas Wolk, The Washington Post

"The distinctive tone of Berry’s first graphic novel is established in the first sentence: 'As it did with spiteful inevitability, the sun rose.' With somber, gray-hued illustrations and a running commentary that echoes Raymond Chandler, Berry delivers an inspired new twist on detective fiction . . . While the tragic denouement here does not bode well for any sequels, Berry is an exciting new talent whose further contributions are to be eagerly anticipated."—Carl Hays, Booklist