The Grot: The Story of the Swamp City Grifters

by Pat Grant

"Anyone willing to get filthy can also get rich." In this dystopian swamp city, two brothers find that opportunity and exploitation lurk around every corner. But who's smarter: the hordes of people rushing to move in, or the equal horde desperate to leave?

Penn and Lipton Wise have set out to Falter City to make their fortune. It's the future, obviously, and things are pretty grim. The Australian landscape is traumatized. Plague is rampant. Machines only work as well as the poor sod pedaling them. Things are hotter and wetter than they used to be, giving the whole place the vibe of a sweaty armpit.

Lippy and Penn are hoping to set up shop in this grimy boom-town, but they've got to stay frosty, because it's teeming with hustlers, swindlers, and scoundrels. It's the sort of place where a lucky moron could make an outrageous fortune in an afternoon and lose it all before bedtime. The sort of place where two enterprising teenagers could really make something of themselves. Or so they say.

In his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Blue, Pat Grant confirms his reputation as "the Australian Mark Twain" (Craig Thompson, author of Blankets and Habibi) with a page-turning graphic novel about economic inequality, desperation, and the gambler's addiction to hope even in the worst of times.

• ISBN10: 1603094660
• ISBN13: 9781603094665
• Publish Date: 23 June 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Top Shelf Productions
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 200
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781603094665

Reviews

[HekArtemis]

3.5 stars, rounding up. I am not a fan of graphic novels or comic books really, so my ratings of such books are always a little unfair. That said, I think my rating here is mostly based on the book itself.

The world was interesting even if it's not explained at all. I think if I hadn't read a description of the book and world before reading the book I would not have understood the world at all. I don't know if that is typical for comic books or not but it's not a good thing in my opinion.

The art is good, but it is not at all to my taste being quite gross and, well, yeah just gross. While the world would be understandably gross, I am not sure why every character needs to be super ugly. No less realistic than books that have only beautiful characters I suppose. But still, not my thing.

And sadly the story was also not really my taste being mostly about business and crime. And yeah I get that the book is not meant to be saying these are good things, and it certainly doesn't glorify any of it - indeed it does well at showing the horrible side of capitalism - still it's just not a topic I like in my fiction.

So, I don't like comic books much, I wasn't a fan of the art style, and the story wasn't my taste. But I can recognise that it's a good story and the art is well done so I am trying to be fair with my rating. I certainly did not hate it.

I am actually a bit interested in what happens next. All I could think was that the boys make a perfect pair, if they just worked together doing what they do best, they could have possibly prevented some of what happened. So will they learn from their experience? But then the epilogue happened and that was awesome. That was what I was wanting from this story. So it ended on a high note for me.