Behind the painted smile
Believe it or not, this book took me 5 months to read. And it ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. By that I don't mean that the ending sucked, but I totally didn't expect it. I knew there was an article/essay by Alan Moore at the end of the novel, but as I flipped the page expecting more of the story to follow, I found a page full of text (as opposed to frames) and it was then that I realised: it was over.
V For Vendetta took so long to read partially because of my reading habit (I usually read my books when my friends go for karaoke sessions; I'm not a big fan of it so when they go, I sit downstairs at the BBT café and read there, and they haven't been going to karaoke for some time), partially because there have also been more pressing things to read (like notes, guides, and regulations), and partially because as the novel progressed, it got from narrative to thought-provoking. As Alan Moore described, Part I introduced the scenario and background, Part II expanded on the characters, but in Part III, everything came together, and it came together forcefully. Part III is what held me back the longest, pondering over the significance of the ideas behind the graphic novel, and I have spent the past 2 months on the last 90 pages or so. Today, EL wanted to make a trip to Garden City to do some shopping, and I felt it would be a great opportunity for me to spend 2 hours away from my computer at Dôme, resolving to make a last sprint to finish whatever was left of it, and that I did.
For the record, yes, it is very different from the film: both in terms of the plot, and the concepts and ideas, the delineation between Good and Evil.
I did not notice whilst reading it, and it was only reading the Alan Moore essay that I realised that V For Vendetta was unique in the sense that it was written with absolutely no thought balloons, sound effects, or caption boxes. The forcefulness of the material was conveyed solely through means of imagery and dialogue, and it is really a very forceful book indeed. I will encourage anyone thinking of giving it a go to read it-hopefully in lesser than 5 months (and in 2011, just before the next GE, haha!)
Now that I'm done with V For Vendetta, and it has returned to its plastic cover for the last time to be kept back in storage, I look up on my shelf and wonder what I should read next....
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Erratum: Had a small problem with the poll thing (dammit) but now it's fixed!
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