Boris the Potato Child

Book excerpt: Boris, the round-headed child, reigns like a despot in the little house he lives in with his mother. His mother, Bulle, formerly known as Aglaia, was once the all-powerful queen of the country Marylene. Since Marylene's fall, residents have lived in peace thanks to a self-governing system they have adopted. But when Boris meets Sabine, a warrior French fry thirsty for revenge, nothing will ever be the same ...The final book in Anne Simon's "Tales of Marylene '' graphic novel trilogy (after The Song of Aglaia and Empress Cixtisis), Boris the Potato Child delivers a bitter critique of our consumerist impulses and abuses. Mixing literature and pop culture (such as mashing Simone de Beauvoir with the Beatles), Simon has created in Marylene a world as abundant in visual imagination as Oz or Narnia, but crafted with a Swiftian pen that's mightier than any man's sword.