Daytripper by GABRIEL BÁ and FÁBIO MOON

Daytripper is a graphic novel created by twin brothers. It's a beautifully illustrated treatment of the life and deaths of the protagonist Brás de Oliva Domingos, an obituary writer for the newspaper who aspires to be a novelist. And "deaths" is correct--at the end of each chapter, Brás meets his demise, always at a critical moment in his life, such as the day his father dies and his first child is born. The next chapter picks up, sometimes following the prior chapter by a few years as though the prior tragedy had not occurred but instead been resolved nicely, and sometimes earlier, with a different tragedy befalling Brás earlier in his life.


The nicely woven vignettes of the important days of Brás' life create a set of counterfactuals that point out the mortality of man--he could die at the moment of a near triumph or at the time of a different tragedy. Or in an "ordinary" time, of course, though the authors do not present us with that sort of death for Brás. 



We learn that Brás was a "miracle child" who literally turned on the lights for the whole city at his birth, and we gradually learn what that means and its significance to his family. And we learn how he will be remembered from his obituary at the end of each chapter.  Though he is a miracle child, he is fallible and mortal, and makes many mistakes along the way.  He aspires to be a novelist like his famous father, and in some of the counterfactuals, he makes a strong beginning. 


That Brás always dies at some critical juncture of his life, when he is filled with hope or joy, or stepping out in hopes of finding the perfect woman he saw across the bakery or recovering a lost friend, says something about the hopes of men and the empty joys of this world. They are fleeting, and at the moment they seem to be ours, they could be taken away in an instant. The authors do not seem to follow any particular spiritual outlook, but the stories remind me of the parable of the man who stores up grain and builds bigger barns, and then learns that that very night his life is required of him. It happens to Brás again and again in a sort of reverse "Groundhog Day" way. 

This graphic novel was at or near the top of some year-end 2011 wrap-up lists that I saw. I picked it up from the library and  finished it on 1/21/12. The beautiful art is worth a second look and this would be a good book for a group discussion.