Philomel Books / “Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel”“BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL” by Ruta Sepetys, illustrated by Dave Kopka, adapted by Andrew Donkin, with Brann Livesay and Chris Dickey (Philomel Books, 160 pages, $19).
A decade ago, Nashville writer Ruta Sepetys enjoyed “the kind of year every debut novelist dreams of” with the publication of “Between Shades of Gray,” a young-adult novel. The story, which follows a 15-year-old girl deported from Lithuania to Siberia during Stalin’s reign of terror, became a Golden Kite winner and an international best-seller, published in more than 60 countries and 40 languages. It led to the 2018 feature film “Ashes in the Snow.” Now, 10 years after its original release, “Between Shades of Gray” has been adapted to a graphic novel by Andrew Donkin, with illustrations by Dave Kopka, color by Brann Livesay and lettering by Chris Dickey.
The visual format makes Sepetys’ difficult tale of a harsh, largely forgotten history more accessible to teens, but beyond that it allows the protagonist, a talented young artist, to come alive in a way that transcends the original. A love of art gives young Lina the strength to live in the face of constant deprivation. As she draws, her work develops literally before the reader, softening the terror of her world, even as Kopka’s watercolor style softens the vast Siberian landscape surrounding her.
Graphic novels have successfully portrayed other dark periods of modern history, of course. Noted examples include the Holocaust of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer, and the American civil-rights struggle as lived by the late John Lewis within the “March” trilogy. Josh Neufeld, author of the graphic novel “Katrina: After the Deluge,” calls the form “one of the most personal and intimate ways to tell true stories.”
Before Sepetys, herself the daughter of a Lithuanian immigrant, created the fictional Lina, she spent five years researching the reality of Lina’s world, interviewing survivors of the gulags and traveling to Lithuania and the locations of prison camps depicted in the novel. The intimacy of the graphic form delivers that reality viscerally, transcending even film as an engrossing medium. Kopka takes full advantage of arresting double-page spreads, unusual perspectives, action details, silent landscape panels and other tools of the comics artist, while Donkin’s spare adaptation pares the best dialogue and observations of the novel to fit the visual richness of the pages.