Review: Exit Wounds

Exit Wounds
By Rutu Modan
Published by Drawn & Quarterly. $19.95 USD

Exit Wounds is a romance, and a welcome one. Sure, it takes place in Tel Aviv and a suicide bombing puts the plot in motion, but it's not political and doesn't strive to make any points. It's just about a thirtysomething but still angry and immature man named Koby who is confronted by a female soldier named Numi about his estranged father having gone missing. Reluctantly, Koby gets involved, perhaps subconsciously because he and his father had left things on bad terms, but also because he doesn't have much else going on in his life. As he follows leads with the willful Numi, he learns about her, his father, and ultimately, himself. Modan has a wide-appeal, clean line and her storytelling is compact and clear. The action unfolds in panels more like a TV drama than a movie--only about every twentieth panel is there silence or a pulling back to show the scenery. Modan's concern is her characters and how they relate to each other, through dialogue and gesture and how they fill their personal spaces--Numi proud and determined, Koby agitated, hunched, put-upon, woeful...and eventually her determination rubs off on him and his posture subtly changes. This graphic novel didn't tear up my hearts (sic), as a back cover blurb promised, but it's a convincing, involving love story in an unusual setting, told with intelligence and great artistic skill, and that's plenty.