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Reviewed by Christopher Butcher
The people that I've shown DOUBLE HAPPINESS to have fallen into two distinct categories. The first category, and the larger one, is filled with people who immediately dislike and are put off by the art, and immediately put down the book, refusing to purchase it. The second are intrigued by the childlike look of the book, and want to know more about it. They also then put down the book without purchasing it.
DOUBLE HAPPINESS is the tale of a young man named Tom, and the business trip he takes to San Francisco. Tom is Chinese, but was born into a small, white suburb in Boston. Tom's used to being in a very small and obvious minority back home, and San Francisco with over 500,000 Chinese people comes as something of both a shock and a revelation to him. As does the warm reception he receives from a distant relative named Wee Boon, who immediately becomes Tom's "cousin", and asks Tom to call him "Jackson". This immediate familiarity, and the difference between the reality of the situations at hand and what the participants would rather be the situation, become the overriding themes of the book.
What I found most intriguing about DOUBLE HAPPINESS is how engrossing it was, how the story totally enveloped you. By page 10, you really felt as if you were Tom, suffering his problems and shortcomings, and feeling just as confused and alone as he is. This is achieved through two very clever uses of the comic medium on Shiga's part, being; very deceptively simple artwork that we can project ourselves onto, and the varying use of English and Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) as the language of the lead characters. As Tom isn't a native speaker of Hokkien, and neither (presumably) are most of the readers, when the various characters around him lapse from English into this foreign language, his confusion and anger at the situation become immediately understandable.
I've brought up the art twice so far, in both very positive and very negative lights, and that's because the art itself will polarize the potential readership. It is very simple, and while reminiscent of early work by THE SIMPSONS creator Matt Groening, according to an editorial in the book Jason Shiga credits much of the look and feel of the artwork to Mohd Nor Khalid (Lat), a cartoonist who "remains relatively obscure outside of South East Asia". The work, as shown in the panel above, is very simple, but still very well executed and shows a solid understanding of perspective, anatomy, composition, and storytelling. It's really very accomplished, but in an iconic/abstract style that some people definitely find off putting. It's too bad, it's entirely because of this iconic and abstract artwork that it's so easy to lose yourself in the very rich, believable story. DOUBLE HAPPINESS isn't an easy work by any stretch. While the story does very slowly build, there are some scenes of violence that are particularly shocking given the context of the story. Personally, I thought the very extreme scenes added a lot to the book, but I can see a lot of people being put off by the very sudden and somewhat gruesome story shift. Still, they were entirely successful and really helped bring the story as far as I'm concerned. Although I've only given you the very basics of the premise and events that shape DOUBLE HAPPINESS, I'd like to make a plea for you to pick up the book for yourself. There's a richness to it that can't be described, and it is a book that will have a very pronounced and lasting effect on you, and one that you'll be re-reading for days. Recommended, with reservations (Some very brutally violent scenes).
Christopher Butcher is the Editor in Chief at PopImage.com
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