The Arrival Review

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is an amazingly beautiful piece of work that not only displays the hardships immigrants and outsiders have in assimilating to a new culture but also how that can be made easier by those who help and welcome them to a new place.

The story starts off with a father who looks like he is going on a Titanicesque 1900s ship on a journey to a far away land. While his first world shows something similar to what we have in our reality, the land he travels to is completely different. The world is drawn like something straight out of a fantasy novel and really contrasts the different worlds very well and how different they are.

We are experiencing the journey of the traveler as he tries to make it in this new land, just finding simple things like his apartment or food that he is used to eating. However he is struggling and lonely until one of the merchants he interacts with welcomes him to his home, at which point we see the power that a small act of kindness can have.

Shaun Tan also somehow is able to portray powerful topics all without ever having a single written word in the entire graphic novel. The graphic novel itself questions traditional story telling just by having no words because I believe he wants the reader to feel just as lost as the traveler and experience what he is. The illustrations are easy to follow and a joy to look at.

I have reviewed another work of short stories by Shuan Tan, but this completely illustrated graphic novel was a joy to look at, especially when the artwork is so great. Shaun Tan as an artist does beautiful drawings that always feel out of this world, yet relate to our own in this weird way. I would completely recommend this book as an art fan or even to just look at Shauns Tan's other works to get a sense of what his work is like.