It is undeniably moving though, teetering just on the edge of something unpleasant and otherworldly, using techniques that Evens has long managed to master.
This isn’t a happy book, in the sense that it leaves one more with a sense of foreboding than well-being. Other characters appear and disappear: the odd hypnotherapist, a couple of gangsters, even representatives from Evens’s earlier work like Panther. Each of them has a motive, trying in their own way to snatch a few moments of happiness from a place that promises it all but doesn’t necessarily deliver. One follows a designer named Jona who is preparing to leave for Berlin but wants one last raucous night on the town the second involves a perennially ill Rodolphe who fights misery to embrace life and then there is Victoria, trying to break away from the stifling influence of her sister and husband. None of these tales follows a linear path, in the sense that there is no clearly defined resolution. The City of Belgium can be obliquely described as three intersecting stories, with the city in which it is set occupying a prominent fourth role.
Those familiar with the work of this award-winning Belgian illustrator will have a very good inkling of what to expect, but it is new admirers who stand to benefit most, because one can almost imagine the surprise and delight flickering across their faces when confronted with his lush, almost dreamlike approach to storytelling. To open a new book like The City of Belgium by Brecht Evens is the equivalent of breaking out a bottle of fine wine: It marks a special occasion, warrants careful consideration, and is best savoured slowly.
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