The Last Resort

This is an unusual book, not quite graphic novel, not quite an illustrated story book or picture book (boundaries that are often so rigidly observed by publishers). The format combines sequences of quarter page images with full page and double page spread illustrations and lengthy chunks of text. Purporting to be Innocenti’s journey to find his lost creative urge, the book gradually reveals itself to be a highly theatrical weaving of a number of characters from literature and film, brought together in a seaside hotel for no apparent reason. The book is primarily a vehicle for Innocenti’s enigmatic, superbly rendered illustrations. His assured technique combines softly graded washes with delicate line work and ambitious, painstakingly constructed perspectives. In a stunning early double page spread illustration we see the artist himself arriving at The Last Resort Auberge, the lights of his little red Renault 4 glowing against the subtle range of muted greys in the wet, stormy landscape. One by one we are introduced to the players; Huckleberry Finn masquerading as a fisher boy, Long John Silver, the invalid girl who is really Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, and 1940s Hollywood baddie, Peter Lorre. Italo Calvino’s Cosimo pops up perched in a tree and Melville’s Moby Dick is washed up on the nearby beach. As the book’s ‘afterword’ tells us, ‘… perhaps you can think of others who might fit these pictures and words just as well.’