Taxi Tales: The Fragrant Lady

Taxi Tales appealed to me because I hadn't seen a Turkish graphic novel before and I felt I would like its artwork based on the beautiful front cover design. The rich colours continue throughout the story and I did indeed love Gunduz' illustrations. He includes fascinating small details such as leaves in the wind or a glimpse of a vintage street sign, and can impart emotions to the reader pretty well too. I was a bit confused that Flore, our heroine, seemed to have two or three significantly different faces and I thought more effort could have been put into continuity, however this wasn't a major issue.

What disappointed me about Taxi Tales was its bland chauvinistic storyline. One night an elderly man gets into the taxi-cab and tells his story to the driver, a story of meeting a French artist, Flore, in 1950s Istanbul. Sounds interesting so far, but instead of getting to discover 1950s Istanbul (or even French art) we are simply shown them having great sex then the man spies on Flore having more sex with a woman whose portrait she was painting. Finally Flore covers up her implausibly large breasts and leaves town without so much as a goodbye. And that's it.

I understand that the idea of this series is to tell short stories, such as one might hear during a taxi ride, in a graphic novel format and I suppose that is exactly what we get here. However I couldn't help but feel that all the effort that went into the illustrations was wasted on such a shallow narrative. I wouldn't read any more Taxi Tales on the strength of this one, though I might in future look into a different offering of Gunduz' art.