The Night Bookmobile - Audrey Niffenegger

I am not usually a big reader of graphic novels - I love art but when it comes to books words are my true love. However I do make an exception for Audrey Niffenegger as I think her artistic interpretation, her amazing imagination and story telling skills make for a great combination.
The Night Bookmobile is given an intriguing and compelling introduction from Neil Gaiman;

The Night Bookmobile is a love letter, both elegiac and heartbreaking, to the things we have read, and to the readers that we are. It says that what we read makes us who we are.

I couldn't agree more! As with Niffenegger's previous graphic story, The Three Incestuous Sisters, The Night Bookmobile is not a children's story - despite the childlike quality of it's illustrations and the gentle way in which the story starts and looks as though it will be a light and breezy tale of how books impact on our world.

The Night Bookmobile follows Alexandra, a young woman who, after an argument with her partner one night goes for a long walk to get over her anger and discovers a bookmobile which contains every piece of literature and written material that she has ever read. Alexandra becomes entranced by the bookmobile and the idea of finding it again - which she does some years later. She reflects on her life through the books she has consumed - and in a way her reading and her love of books starts to consume her.

This is a magical, if a little scary, story and I was completely taken in by it. Niffenegger writes in the After Words;

When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer lives, a cautionary tale of the seduction of the written word.

I think this is a must read for all readers and book lovers everywhere - it raises some great questions and gave me pause for thought about the place reading and books take in my life.