The Gryphon: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Is Rediscovered

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

For nearly a decade, the Griffin and Sabine books (Griffin & Sabine,
Sabine’s Notebook, and The Golden Mean) have sold millions of copies
internationally, as well as creating for their author substantial wealth
and fame. Nick Bantock’s skills as a graphics designer and writer are
more in sync than ever before in these two new works. The Artful Dodger
is an autobiographical collage full of philosophical musings, whimsical
asides, and, of course, lavish illustrations. The Gryphon is the first
volume in a new trilogy, Morning Star.

The Artful Dodger, Bantock’s hefty and quirky autobiography, takes us
from his art school days in Britain, where, a child of the 1960s, he
started his career as illustrator and artist, to his disenchantment with
Thatcherite London and his move, in the late 1980s, to Vancouver. The
genesis of the pop-up books through which he made his initial
reputation, and the creation of the epistolary format of the Griffin and
Sabine books, are chronicled with intelligence and droll humor.

The Gryphon reprises Bantock’s earlier enigmatic characters, Griffin
Moss and Sabine Strohem; revisits them in the form of their
correspondence, presented here to the mystified Matthew Sedon, a young
archaeologist living in Egypt. This correspondence is mirrored by the
letters of Matthew and his lover, Isabella, a student living in Paris.
The book is a series of revelations: Matthew and Isabella exchanging
their intimacies and observations, while at the same time starting to
comprehend how the Griffin and Sabine letters have such a effect on
their psyches. Foundations are clearly being placed here for the rest of
the trilogy. The Bantock formula may not be for everyone, but it is
certainly well worth sampling.