Product Description
Hailed by The Comics Journal as one of Europe’s most important and innovative comics artists, David B. has created a masterpiece in Epileptic, his stunning and emotionally resonant autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother. Epileptic gathers together and makes available in English for the first time all six volumes of the internationally acclaimed graphic work.

David B. was born Pierre-François Beauchard in a small town near Orléans, France. He spent an idyllic early childhood playing with the neighborhood kids and, along with his older brother, Jean-Christophe, ganging up on his little sister, Florence. But their lives changed abruptly when Jean-Christophe was struck with epilepsy at age eleven. In search of a cure, their parents dragged the family to acupuncturists and magnetic therapists, to mediums and macrobiotic communes. But every new cure ended in disappointment as Jean-Christophe, after brief periods of remission, would only get worse.

Angry at his brother for abandoning him and at all the quacks who offered them false hope, Pierre-François learned to cope by drawing fantastically elaborate battle scenes, creating images that provide a fascinating window into his interior life. An honest and horrifying portrait of the disease and of the pain and fear it sowed in the family, Epileptic is also a moving depiction of one family’s intricate history. Through flashbacks, we are introduced to the stories of Pierre-François’s grandparents and we relive his grandfathers’ experiences in both World Wars. We follow Pierre-François through his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, all the while charting his complicated relationship with his brother and Jean-Christophe”s losing battle with epilepsy. Illustrated with beautiful and striking black-and-white images, Epileptic is as astonishing, intimate, and heartbreaking as the best literary memoir.

From the Hardcover edition.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 19 reviews)

Manific !

This autobiography story caught me from it's first page. The hypnotic drawings, full of ink, shadows, and so colorful although painted black & white only.
The story tells the tales of what appears to be at first as normal family with epileptic kid. Soon, the seizures take the family into a voyage of great suffer but full of hope, while effecting and deforming the kids souls and life path. The parents, both kind of New-Age bourgeois type, trying to find a cure for their son, while visiting all kinds of guru's, magicians, witches and doctors of all sorts. This voyage takes the whole family into never ending frustrating whirlpool. Along with that, David B. tells the story of France, through Alger war and others, culture changes, and local, yet influence the world, events. Brilliant.
Yes, the story is pretty sad, and morbid but it's worth it. Childhood conceptions, dreams and thoughts comes into vivid describful life, takes the reader into the mind of a child, and later - adult. This journey is fascinating.
Eventually, everybody is epileptic this way or another...
5 stars definitely.
July 17, 2008

True that.

I purchased this book because I suffer from epilepsy. This book is authentic and I recommend it to all, epileptic or not. Filled with family trials and very skilled illistrations.
June 27, 2008

Excellent graphic novel

This book blows me away and I don't usually read this artform. But the book got great reviews, and has only recently been translated into English (from French). It's original. It's unscathingly truthful. I hope David B. gets the recognition he deserves.
May 25, 2008

Disturbing and beautiful

None of the individuals portrayed in this story emerge intact, including the author David B. I was left with the impression that either David B. is so fully aware of this that he purposely (and perhaps brilliantly) avoided communicating how messed up everyone in his family is, or that they are so messed up that he has no idea how messed up they are. Clearly he is angry at his family for spending his entire childhood revolving around his brother and his illness, but that's perfectly normal for someone who has grown up with a seriously ill family member. But David B's self awareness seems to end there. The damage is more extreme and disturbing because his family's approach to illness and guilt is more extreme and disturbing. This book is not "light reading" in any sense - There were times when I was only able to take in a page or two in a sitting. The art is so rich and complex and the story is so complicated, I needed to take breaks or I wouldn't know what I was reading anymore. The book is brilliant, beautifully translated from French, and like nothing I've ever read.
April 05, 2008

unknown Confessions

the only prior experience i brought to this reading of a graphic novel was 'jimmy corrigan: the smartest boy in the world,' which is why amazon recommended it to me. ultimately, i think that the genre is all that connects them. this book is much more intimate, personal, passionate, and chilling. all things 'smartest' wanted to be but only got 4/5's of the way there.

i myself am an epileptic and there are fewer diseases that this book relates to than just ones that are 'out of control.' the effects of epilepsy are far more psychological than physical. where a cancer victim is at the mercy of the disease and body, the epileptic, like many schizophrenics is affronted by dark and sinister shadows, lurking demons. however, it's one thing for an epileptic to be able to voice this. i find it amazing that David B., the brother and author, found so many ways of accurately depicting the demons' influence and sympathetically already fighting in his own way to overcome them with the tools of a child. both graphically and through the course of the story you learn of the ways the family and David B. adapt to confront the shadow, though the epilepsy ultimately remains intractable.

another thing about this book that opened my eyes, is that for the epileptic, the story is told in first, second, and third person. for the family member, where it may always seems superficially to be a disease to which the family remains a third party, one may realize the struggles endured that were ignored. if i were to ask my mother how it felt for her to go through many of the struggles faced in this book, she might not think much of them. but upon reading and seeing the struggles afresh, she might realize that she had much more at stake than anyone, even herself, gave her credit.

this book is so moving and deep because of David B.s ability to so comprehensively annotate each of five family members struggle. the autobiographical aspect takes a backseat to the chronicling of a dark disease that is never cured, much like alcoholism, but only ever treated and hoped against. the ending is particularly potent on this point: it is a tenuous grasp that is held to consciousness, and a varying relationship any of us have to reality, but when we hold together we arent scattered below. .mfg
August 30, 2007

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