Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope by Emmanuel Guibert

From the Publisher

“When I was eighteen, Uncle Sam told me he’d like me to put on a uniform and go off to fight a guy by the name of Adolf. So I did.”

When Alan Cope joined the army and went off to fight in World War II, he had no idea what he was getting into. This graphic memoir is the story of his life during wartime, a story told with poignant intimacy and matchless artistry.

Across a generation, a deep friendship blossomed between Alan Cope and author/artist Emmanuel Guibert. From it, Alan’s War was born – a graphic novel that is a deeply personal and moving experience, straight from the heart of the Greatest Generation – a unique piece of WWII literature and a ground-breaking graphic memoir.

Publishers Weekly

Guibert writes and draws for American G.I. Alan Cope in this poignant and frank graphic memoir of young soldier who was told to serve his country in WWII and how it changed him forever. When he first enters Fort Knox at 18, he is young and impressionable, more of a dreamer than "the military type." Slowly, Cope grows through his experiences in the war. He forges candid friendships with his fellow soldiers and remains ever insightful in his recollections of the war and his life afterward. Together, Cope and Guibert forge a story that resonates with humanity. Guibert's illustrations capture the time period vividly. While the subject matter is familiar from many wartime memoirs, Guibert's fluid, simple but assured linework captures the personalities of Cope and his friends, elevating the material to a far more affecting level. (Oct.)

School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up

Cope was a paper delivery boy in California in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. A couple of years later, at 18, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and shipped off to Europe. In 1994, he met cartoonist Guibert and recounted his wartime experiences and what he'd thought of them during the intervening years. The resulting book-published in France a year after Cope's death in 1999-puts readers nearly inside the skin of a young man who learns to deal with Army regulations, a number of Western cultures, friendships, and what turned out to be a lifelong exploration of life's possible meanings. Guibert allows Cope to speak directly from the pages, where the images he is describing unfold in small, neat panels in which grays, black line, and open white space provide details of expression, furnishings, the open countryside, and military equipment. Guibert and Cope are well matched and compelling as storytellers. There is no central dramatic moment here-Cope's major wartime work involved neither attacks nor defenses-but the complete honesty offers insights and answers often omitted in war stories. Cope becomes so real that, as he ages across the final quarter of the book, teens will stay involved with how his youthful experiences and ideals colored his mature choices and memories.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Kirkus Reviews

This epic graphic memoir spans oceans and generations, with a narrative as engrossing as the artistry that illustrates it. In his preface, renowned French graphic novelist Guibert (co-author: The Professor's Daughter, 2007, etc.) explains the bond he shared with the much older Cope, who had served as an American soldier during World War II and left his native country to return to France in the aftermath. "He spoke well; I listened well," writes Guibert. "Save two or three, his anecdotes were nothing spectacular. They evoked only very remotely what movies or books about the Second World War had taught me. Still, I found them captivating, because of the accents of truth they contained. I could literally see what he was describing." Now the American reader can as well (the first volume of the collaboration was initially published in France in 2000, the year after Cope's death). As the title suggests, this is one man's war memories, filled not with tales of larger-than-life heroism but with the chance encounters, tragic absurdities and small kindnesses experienced by a sheltered young soldier of uncommon intelligence, as recollected by an older man who has come to take stock of his life and reconsider the values by which he has lived it. He comes to question himself, his country and humanity in general, while retaining a humanitarian warmth and a deep appreciation for the arts. The narrative voice is captivating, and the black-and-white illustrations are often stunning, whether capturing the grandeur of Big Sur and the giant redwoods of California or showing the destruction of European villages by soldiers who shared a common bond of humanity with the civilian "enemy." The Veteran's Daypublication befits a volume that underscores the resonance and legacy of war. Thankfully for readers, Guibert promises a prequel volume on Cope's childhood in California, in testament to "the storyteller in him that I was drawn to-his personality, his style, his voice, and his astounding memory."

Product Details