Rutu Modan’s New Graphic Novel on Life in Israel
Exit Wounds / Rutu Modan / Drawn and Quarterly, 2007 / 172 pages
What is most impressive about Rutu Modan’s new graphic novel, Exit Wounds? Is it the striking realism that peeks out at the reader through the façade of the usually fantastic form of the extended comic book? The simplicity of the two-dimensional line-drawings that belie the complexity of the plot, a quest narrative-cum-love story about the search for a lost father and the ensuing romantic development between the two searchers? The unexpected humor seeping in amidst terrorist attacks, dissolving families, and political unrest?
Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, Exit Wounds tells the story of a young cabdriver named Koby who finds out that his estranged father, Gabriel, might have died in a recent bombing in Hadera. He hears the news from the father’s young lover Numi, the misunderstood daughter of wealthy Tel Avivians, who sojourns with Koby to and from the site of the bombing, seeking details about Gabriel’s death. Along the way, the two uncover unexpected information about his life (A second wife? Another mistress? A newfound faith?) that throws them both off course and into uncharted territory.
Modan draws her readers through the complex social structures of contemporary Israel as Koby and Numi learn more about the mysteries that surround Gabriel’s life. Readers meet illegal Filipino street workers, overenthusiastic food vendors, Russian immigrants, old friends, and survivors of past attacks, many searching for answers much in the same way that Koby and Numi do. The shadow of the bombing haunts the entirety of the text, dispersing and uniting characters without regard to sex, class, or race. In Exit Wounds the warp and weave of Israel’s social fabric comes undone only to tighten itself around characters who are unexpectedly brought together to reconnect the dispersed threads. From morgue to cemetery to city center to idyllic beachfront, Koby and Numi’s circuitous search for answers reflects a broader quest for reason and peace of mind in Israel today.
Young Israelis are bearing witness to an Israel that is endlessly evolving, growing, and accommodating new faces and subcultures, while simultaneously struggling with the conflicts that have troubled Israel’s existence since its birth. How does one live calmly in a country whose daily life is fraught with the unnerving possibility of a coming attack? Is there any way to prepare for what life might bring tomorrow? The book’s characters develop their own means of coping, ranging from indifference and frustration to nervous laughter and acceptance of life’s unknowns.
Answers, however, don’t come easily in Exit Wounds. The book begets questions about family, friendship, politics, romance, nationality, race, and class. And perhaps that is what most impresses about Modan’s graphic novel. In spite of its brevity, the book is loaded with inquiries into the complexities of Israeli society: how familial ties dissolve in the face of political unrest; how relationships form and fail as a result of personal and national fears; how class and caste both serve to bring people together and drive them apart.
Don’t expect an arduous study of national psychology. The book, even with its heavy themes and examination of weighty issues, maintains its humor and rarely loses itself in cynical undertones. From sisterly teasing to lovers’ intimacy, Modan has a sharp eye for domestic living and uses that keen vision to draw out lightness and warmth – and ultimately, hope – in even the darkest situations. The result is a book that encourages those on a long journey for answers to live the questions, and then one day live themselves into an answer.
