Patience by Daniel Clowes, book review: A masterful rainbow through time
A portrait of a struggling couple flips into a sprawling, ambitious, time travel murder-mystery
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.There is an audacity to Patience that you might not expect from a comic book storyteller entering his 32nd year of working in the medium. As both artist and writer, Daniel Clowes' signature style has built up a huge following across a series of graphic novels, and has even generated its own adjective – Clowesian – to describe the acerbic, melancholic humour that drips off each and every page.
Building on the science-fiction theme of 2011's The Death-Ray, Patience sees the author's standard mise-en-scène of suburban isolation turned on its head within 13 pages, as a portrait of a struggling couple flips into a sprawling, ambitious, time travel murder-mystery.
The initial premise – or at least the theme behind it – is powerful in its simplicity. Warping back 20 years to investigate the death of his partner (the eponymous heroine) Jack's adventure can be seen both as a meditation on the limits of love – how well can you ever really know someone? – and an expression of the power of it.
In the last third of the story in particular, Patience becomes as much Meatloaf as maudlin – you would do anything for love, and, yes, you would even do that.
Things become more complex when timelines converge, but Clowes admirably eschews most genre cliches – with a few knowing hat-tips – to focus on the message of the story.
The nature of the time travel device, for example, is never made clear, but the inherent absurdity of such a contraption is embraced, rather than obfuscated with metaphysics or pseudo-science. No flux capacitors here.
If at times the story buckles under the weight of its own conceptual complexity, there's a boldness, both to the pencilling and the dialogue, that more than makes up for it.
The vibrant colouring leaps off the page, particular in Clowes' vision of 2029 – a veritable rainbow of vice and iniquity. And the flamboyance with which he illustrates the various drug trips and nightmare visions that punctuate is a joy to behold. You cannot help but feel carried along by a true master of the form, a cartoonist working at the very height of his powers.
Almost 20 years on from Ghost World – the work, later made into a film, that first brought Clowes international recognition – Patience is a new high watermark for the author, but also for the medium as a whole.
It is not just his longest work, but his most affecting, and the powerful emotional punch of the closing pages is one that will stay with the reader for a long time.
Clowes is a singular voice, not just in comics but in American literature, and I hope Patience might be the project that finds him the larger audience he deserves.
Jonathan Cape, £16.99. Order at £14.99 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments