Page 45 Review by Stephen
I spent a lovely three or four hours with this, from the creator of BREAKWATER, the much missed autobiographical KATZINE comics, and FOLLOW ME IN, that ever so lush, transporting travel journal bursting with Mexican colour, flavour and just a little bite.
Perfect for a dreary winter’s day, the soft forms and earthy colours of THE PASS are equally rich and comforting. Thanks to the art running full-bleed to the edges of each page, I felt thoroughly enveloped, cocooned against the misery and the cold, even when Claudia ventures onto a foggy motorway on Christmas Eve – and that page sure has to be seen to be believed!
In fact, a feeling of calm descends as soon as you open to the book’s kitchen end papers, even if the pre-title pages, however sunny, settle a suspicion inside you that all may not be or end well. A bit like Posy Simmonds’s TAMARA DREWE and CASSANDRA DARKE – but without the bodies!
It’s the sort of calm that comes with energy spent, and it takes a lot of energy to run a restaurant, especially a relatively new one you’ve created from scratch. The pressures are palpable. But here’s a truth, and the same goes with a smile – it gets the endorphins going, innit:
“You can act calm even if you don’t feel it... and then somehow most of the time it just seems to manifest.”
That’s Ben, the Alley restaurant’s cocktail creator and argument-diffuser on inner peace and customer control. Shame he’s not as confident with his somewhat dismissive / oblivious parents. But then already stretched Claudia Grace and Lisa Turner (head-chef, restauranteur-on-the-rise, and co-chef plus almost everything else, respectively) are each beset by external pressures of their own, parental or otherwise: shadows, if you like, threatening to fall. But it’s the half-seen one which will hit our happy few hardest, and hurt the most.
In summary: you know when you’re just trying to crack and do your job and look after each other at the same time...? Other stuff, yeah; other stuff happens.
The publisher writes:
"In her early thirties, Claudia is fast becoming a sensation on the culinary scene. In the midst of putting her chic London restaurant, Alley, on the map, she decides to enter the upcoming Chef of the Year competition. All this, as she is also attempting to make a name for herself beyond the shadow of her famous chef father. As the day of the competition nears, tensions simmer as the pressures of ambition, business, family, and friendship threaten to throw her world awry.
In The Pass, NYT-reviewed British comic artist Katriona Chapman brings to life the fast-paced, high-pressure atmosphere of restaurant life, with a lived-in cast of characters including chef Claudia, her best friend and sous chef Lisa, and barman Ben. Chapman delves into themes of identity, the pains of expectation and success, and the allure of running from the life you’ve built. A sensitive and affecting slice of life, rendered in soft digital coloring."
