The Marvels

The Marvels, by Brian Selznick, 665 pages

From the creator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret comes another book in the same style- half of the story is illustration-only, the other half is prose.  The illustrated part tells a story of a family of actors, dating back to the eighteenth century- but with an ambiguous ending.  The prose part begins in 1990, with the focus being on a young man who has run away from school to find his best friend and stay with his uncle.  Selznick does a great job of bringing the two stories together, in what turns out to be an unexpected manner.  Reality is not always what we think it is, and stories are not always true.  This particular one really resonated with me more than the previous Selznick works, both visually (the pages are gold leafed- beautiful!) and story-wise.