141 Rottin Road 'A cosy, one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a charming Victorian conversion. Newly decorated and with a separate kitchen and reception room. Located just a bus ride away from a wide range of shops, restaurants and bars.'
Welcome to The House that Groaned and the six lonely inhabitants of its separate flats, characters so at odds with themselves and their bodies that they could only have stepped out of the pages of a comic novel. There's Barbara, our make-up artist heroine and man-made blonde bombshell; Matt, the photographic retoucher who can't touch; Janet, the tormented dietician; twenty-something Brian, the diseaseophile whose sexual penchant takes him to the edge of perversion; old Mrs Durbach, who literally blends in to the background; and the gloriously fleshy and hedonistic Marion, matriarch of the Midnight Feasters. Behind the house's anonymous facade, the building is decaying. As pipes explode and walls collapse, events force the residents out of their doors and into each others lives - with dramatic consequences.
Exploring the themes of body image, sexuality and the loneliness and isolation of contemporary urban life, The House that Groaned is a modern-day fairy tale full of magic realism and farcical symbolism which will woo both comic fans and attract new readers to the medium.
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Karrie Fransman breaks all the rules of storytelling accumulated over the past thousands of years. She creates a confusion at first, that suddenly bursts into the obvious and simplest fact: that all the stories of, and in our lives, are personal and private. Unlinked and unlike anyone else's...like our DNA. The only way this wonderful 'book' could have been written is by illustration, not by word, rather like the hidden stories drawn on the walls of caves. -
An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade. - The Guardian
A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive - ForbiddenPlanet.co.uk
You can't help but be by turns moved and repulsed by the inhabitants of 141 Rottin Road. But beneath their outrageous behaviour and serious hang-ups, they still have a touching humane side that we can all relate to, with their issues with body image, loneliness and pitiful attempts to overcome past traumas that have shaped the people they have become. I'm not usually a huge fan of graphic novels because I find them too shallow with superficial, stereotypical characters but that is certainly not true of The House That Groaned. Love it or hate it, you will be thinking about the characters long after you've turned the final page. - Madhouse Family Reviews
About the Author
Karrie Fransman's autobiographical comic strips 'My Peculiar World' were published in the Guardian's G2, and her graphic story, 'The Night I Lost my Love' was published in the Times in 2010. She also makes Comic Apps and sculptures and her work has been exhibited in London, Belgium and Russia. She runs projects at the London Print Studio and House of Illustration. Born in Edinburgh, Karrie now lives in London in a house not dissimilar to the one in her book. You can see more of her work at www.karriefransman.com
