She has done it again. Arctic Summer, the brilliant young renegade of the graphic novel world whose past works include a book written entirely with self-extracted azarole ink (for a while successfully passed off as the artist’s blood) and another in which the order of the frames was determined not by the whims of the author but rather by those of a pseudo-random number generator, has produced her most subtly subversive (and also her best) book to date.

The conceit of To See an Elephant is simple enough: it is a graphic novel that has no pictures (with one important exception which will be touched on later). Instead, the book consists of blank white frames partially filled with neatly handwritten black text, an initially disorienting reversal that has a profound influence on the reader’s experience.

One may justifiably question at the outset whether this book even deserves its genre label, and I can unqualifiedly assert that it does. The sensation of reading To See an Elephant is much more akin to that of reading a graphic novel than that of reading a conventional novel, as Ms. Summer has rightly ascertained that, at its core, the defining characteristic of a graphic novel is not its pictures (which certainly assist in achieving the desired effect but are, as this book demonstrates, not strictly necessary) but rather the way in which the reader’s eyes are drawn across the page. And indeed, the work induces the eye movement typical of a graphic novel by assiduously observing traditional theories of frame placement. In other respects, though, it diverges radically from the norm. It is an outpost of claustrophobic minimalism in a traditionally maximalist art form. It recounts an intimate, meditative story in a typically action-packed, larger than life genre.

I suppose I should now touch on this story, as it is remarkable and as without it the central conceit of the work would be merely a provocative but ineffectual gesture. The book, in an Oulipian move, is, in a certain abstract sense, about the form of the book itself and the constraints within which the book was written. It tells the story of a female member of a reclusive commune, all of whose members have their eyes sealed shut. For members born within the commune, as is the case with the main character, the sealing ritual occurs within days of birth, effectively effacing any memory of the sensation of sight.

This certainly has something in common with the brand of asceticism present in many monasteries and convents, but the significance of this practice goes deeper than mere self-deprivation. Immediately after his or her sealing ceremony, each member is presented with a personal object, typically a piece of sculpture or other very tactile object, to be kept for his or her entire life. The member is instructed to feel the object every day and to attempt to internally visualize it (without, in the case of those born in the commune, even knowing exactly what it means to visualize something). This goes on until the member is close to death, at which time the unsealing ceremony is performed. The member’s eyes are opened and allowed to gaze upon this object for the first time. The sudden revelation of the appearance of the object, with which the member is supremely familiar in all respects other than the visual, will then illuminate the mysterious passage from the unseen to the seen and spark a sudden, deep comprehension of the divine. By applying the same transformation witnessed in her personal object to another entity unseen but ceaselessly explored for her entire life, the member is finally, days before her death, able to see God.

Of course, there are lurking biological issues concerning the above account (not to mention the immediate health risks that must be involved with eye-sealing), and though they receive no explicit mention in To See an Elephant, Ms. Summer seems to be perfectly well aware of them. Indeed, studies have shown that prolonged visual sensory deprivation, especially occurring soon after birth, typically leads to blindness. And so, upon finally having their eyes unsealed, the members of the commune are likely not seeing in the traditional sense. Yet they seem to think that they are seeing. What is it that they see? An alternate truth? A mere projection of their own idiosyncratic ideas about vision? Are they thus seeing a false image of God? Is their pre-death religious bliss somehow “undeserved”? A host of philosophical questions are raised here, and Ms. Summer does well not to veer off into metaphysical reflection, leaving this path for the intrepid reader to walk down alone.

Ms. Summer also does well not to pass any judgment on the commune itself, a group that much of modern society would find both cruel and deluded. Instead, she simply and elegantly presents a life unfolding in this bizarre landscape. The book is told from the perspective of the nameless (to the reader, at least) protagonist and opens upon her receiving her personal object. It happens to be a carving of an elephant (the reader is not told this explicitly, of course, but rather guided to this conclusion by the tactile descriptions of the object), recalling the classic tale, present in many religious traditions, of the blind men and the elephant (perhaps it is not a coincidence that “feel” is the approximate pronunciation of the word for “elephant” in many languages, including Arabic, Azerbaijani, Farsi, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Kazak, Pashtu, and Uzbek). The reader is then leisurely ushered through the rest of the narrator’s life. He sees (or, rather, doesn’t see) her rebellious, resentful adolescence, in which she attempts repeatedly to escape from the commune. He sees her settle down and accept her role in the community. He sees her immersing herself in religious practice. He sees her getting married and having a child. He sees her assuming a prominent role in the commune’s High Council. Finally, in the remarkable climactic scene, he sees (and here this is after all the correct word) the unsealing of her eyes, the entrance of vision into her life after 70 years of darkness. It is only here that images make their way into the novel. I will not ruin the reader’s experience by divulging their nature except to say that they are more than worth the wait.

The story’s setting imbues it with a profound strangeness and intensity that is amplified by Ms. Summer’s presentation, making the reader much more constantly and vividly aware of the characters’ sightlessness than he would be were he reading a conventional novel. There seem to be two primary reasons for this, both stemming from the nature of the graphic novel genre (though one involves something this work has in common with other graphic novels and the other involves it’s glaring difference). The first is that the hand-drawn text and irregular frame placement establish a more direct link between the reader and the narrator than traditional prose structures would allow. The informality and spontaneity of the narrative are more easily transferred. The second is that the constant subversion of the reader’s expectation of actually finding images in a graphic novel creates a palpable void, never allowing the reader to forget that some essential piece of the story is missing. The reader is placed in a situation remarkably like that of the narrator and is thus able to pass through with her the same stages of rebellion, acceptance, immersion, and, finally, apotheosis.