DRAMA in The Delicacy - Cora Lewis-Patterson

             

            SPOILER ALERT: There will be spoilers in the upcoming parts of this post.

The Delicacy by James Albon is a graphic novel that takes an interesting perspective on how greed can cost a person their relationships, as well as their sanity. A book filled with humor, lots of family drama, and grotesquely detailed artwork, The Delicacy is an enticing read for anyone who stumbles across it.

Tulip (a.k.a. Danny) and Rowan are sheltered brothers who have lived their entire lives on a remote Scottish island, helping their mother farm and grow organic foods. Rowan quite likes this lifestyle, enjoying the peacefulness of farming and the comforts of home every day along with his mom. Danny, however, wishes to leave his home behind and explore the mainland in London, to visit a hotel his old boss at the local restaurant used to work at, and open a restaurant of his own. Opportunity strikes when Rowan and Danny’s aunt and uncle have been declared dead at sea and their previous home is now in their ownership. With a little convincing on Rowan’s part, the two brothers move to their deceased family’s house and start up a plan to open up a new restaurant in London, with Rowan providing organic food from his farming and Danny cooking organic dishes. The restaurant (Tulip’s) slowly but surely starts to become a great success, specifically increasing popularity once a new type of mushroom discovered on Rowan’s farm is added to the menu. As Tulip’s becomes more successful with every passing day, Danny’s greed for money and fame grows along with it. With a sudden shortage of mushrooms and an unfortunate incident inside of the restaurant, Danny starts to lose his grasp on his sanity more and more, eventually causing his already weak family bond to break even more. Everything starts to spiral out of control, and before he knows it, Danny is arrested and put in jail for murder. Why was he arrested? Read the next part of this blog to hear about all of the intense drama in this enticing graphic novel.

            Within the many pages and illustrations in The Delicacy (although seeming childish in its starting themes of a picture book and main character’s seemingly unrealistic dream), many intense themes are spread throughout, such as the unhealthy toll capitalism has on people, broken family dynamics, murder, and slight cannibalism. The theme out of these that I found most interesting was the family dynamics, as all of the other themes helped contribute to how Danny and Rowan’s family interacted with each other and how they perceived each other, especially how murder was involved. The terrible incident mentioned earlier that occurred inside of Tulip’s was the sudden death of a man who had come to talk to Danny privately. In a state of panic, Danny put the corpse in his car and drove to his brother’s house to ask him to help bury the body. All seems well a few weeks after this event until Danny gets a call from Rowan saying that the mushrooms that sent his restaurant to success were growing where he believed the body was buried. Danny says to ignore it and does not seem worried or suspicious of this, so the two brothers leave the mushrooms alone. Back to the earlier section, it was believed that Rowan and Danny’s aunt and uncle had died at sea; however, when digging up the mushrooms from Rowan’s garden, their uncle’s skeleton (with his signature gold tooth) is found deep in the soil. Rowan is sent into a frenzy and now knows for sure that 1. The mushrooms do in fact come from dead bodies and 2. His aunt and uncle definitely did not die out at sea. Although this discovery shook up Rowan to a great extent, Danny’s greed had far surpassed his sanity at this point, and rather than feeling queasy by this disgusting news, he began plotting how to get fresh corpses to grow more mushrooms. This causes a breakout between the two brothers and Rowan flees back to his mom in the old remote Scottish island he calls home. At first, comforted by the feeling of his childhood home and the touch of his mother, Rowan soon realizes the hatred within her heart — especially towards her sister — and has the epiphany that he does not wish to feel the same way towards his brother. Returning to London with a new wave of hope and desperation, Rowan is surprised to find Danny at the farm, and even more surprised to see him wearing his rain boots. Quickly, he has the horrid realization that Danny has just killed and buried another new corpse in the garden. Completely outraged, a fight immediately breaks out between the two brothers and Rowan decides enough is enough. He hops into his automobile and drives to Tulip’s, with Danny hot on his tail. As soon as he reaches Tulip’s, Rowan runs inside and desperately tries to tell the customers that the mushrooms sprout from human corpses, but as he is doing so, Danny grabs a customer's knife and stabs it straight through his stomach, immediately killing Rowan. Charged with murder, a loss of sanity, and even worse family relationships, Danny loses his success and is sent to jail for life. All of these themes involved throughout The Delicacy make it out to be a dramatic, gut and heart-wrenching story about a broken family and capitalistic greed, and one hell of a good story.