Posy Simmonds

Tamara Drewe ~ Posy Simmonds

I have been a huge fan of the graphic novel since buying Offspringette a copy of Art Spiegelman's Maus many years ago and sneaking a quick preview of it myself. I'd got it all wrong and quite thought the 'graphic' meant something else entirely. My own copy of Maus wasn't far behind and I quickly fell in love with the melding of my 1950s and 60s childhood love of the comic with the more serious adult story. Sometimes fun, sometimes a way of recounting life's less palatable and difficult events.
Scanning the graphic novel shelf I see more books which do just that, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto to mention but two.
Posy Simmonds was always going to do something brilliant and different and I must be the only person on the planet who didn't really clock the long-running 110 episodes in The Guardian of Tamara Drewe. But that's all to the good because, having read this interview with Posy Simmonds and realising I had to read the book, I sensed  that this might be an even better experience for not having followed the column, a chance to approach it fresh and uninformed.
Not only that but I walked in on an event at Port Eliot this summer where the recent film version of the book was being discussed, and with someone who seemed very important in front of a huge and very appreciative audience, but I didn't have a programme nor a clue who he was.
I took a picture anyway because he was sure to be famous.

Truth will out, I'm embarrassed to admit that I really wanted to get a good seat for the Fisherman's Friends who were on next so I sat and listened. This by the way for the uninitiated is how Port Eliot works, you have a ticket for the whole day or weekend and pitch in and out of whatever you want for as long as you want, which is how I came to hear distinguished and much-revered film director Stephen Frears talking about his latest film Tamara Drewe.

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