The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli.
Title: The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch.
Author: Neil Gaiman.
Artist: Michael Zulli.
Genre: Fiction, graphic novel.
Country: England, U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2008 (short story 1999).
Summary: Come, come and hear of the strange and terrible tale of Miss Finch, an exacting woman befallen by mystery and abduction deep under the streets of London! An adaptation of the short story, this tale sees an American author come to London for some inspiration, and get convinced to be a double date to a serious, cynical, withdrawn woman. But when the evening takes an unexpected turn and the four end up in the musty caverns for a subterranean circus spectacle, with fantastical and unexpected things at every turn, the reality around them begins to twist as well. Soon, they may or may not have misplaced Miss Finch, and may or may not have found her again in the least expected or understandable place imaginable.
My rating: 7/10
My review:
♥
♥ The room buzzed at the corners with the blue-purple of ultraviolet light. Teeth and shirts and flecks of lint began to glow in the darkness. A low, throbbing music began. We looked up...
Their costumes fluoresced, and they glowed like old dreams high above us, swinging back and forth in time to the music on unseen trapezes. Then, as one, they let go and tumbled toward us!
We gasped, but before they reached us, they bounced on the air and rose up again, like yo-yos, and climbed back on their trapezes, attached to the roof by rubber cords. They bounced and dove and swam through the air above us while we clapped and gasped and watched them in happy silence.
♥ It was a huge room. I knew that, even in the dim mist. Perhaps the dark intensifies the other senses, perhaps it's simply that we are always processing more information than we imagine. Echoes of our coughing came back to us from walls hundreds of feet away through what seemed to be primeval forest.
And then I became convinced, with a certainty bordering on madness, that there were great beasts in the room, and that they were watching us hungrily.
Slowly the mist cleared, and we saw Miss Finch.
I wonder to this day where they got the costume. What little there was of it fitted her perfectly. She stared at us without emotion.
♥
"Yes, just as she described them. The smilodons."
The great cats padded around us, circling slowly.
♥ In the back of the huge cellar room light was slowly coming up. It seemed as if dawn were breaking. I could hear, as if from a great way off, the chirp of crickets and the calls of strange birds awaking to greet the day.
And part of me-the writer part of me, the bit that has noted the particular way the light hit the broken glass in the puddle of blood even as I staggered out from a car crash, and has observed in exquisite detail the way that my heart was broken, or did not break, in moments of real, profound personal tragedy-it was that part of me that thought: "You cold get that effect with a smoke machine, some plants, and a tape track. You'd need a really good lighting guy, of course."
Miss Finch gave us one last long, thoughtful look, as if making up her mind, and then turned her back and walked toward the dawn and the jungle underneath the world, flanked by two padding saber-toothed tigers.