Idle Days

This spooky graphic novel set during the WWII riffs on the old saying about idle hands. Hiding from the war and his father’s death, gloomy young Canadian Jerome has gone AWOL from the army. Fearful of Jerome being spotted in their small, nosy town, his mother ships him to his gruff grandfather’s cabin in the woods. The house has a morbid history pocked with fire and suicide. Jerome’s emotional state spirals out in the seemingly haunted woods, and he’s paralyzed by nightmares of the battlefield. Jerome listens to radio reports of the slaughter in Europe, and the odd black cat crosses his path. Once the ghostly scenario is established, Desaulniers-Brousseau doesn’t do much more plot-wise than nudge it forward with minor revelations and higher-pitched spookiness. Leclerc’s assured, lustrous, and woodsy fall-tinted illustrations make every page feel like a story about to be told around a campfire at dusk. For readers fond of creepy literary tales, this is an unsettling, if occasionally formulaic, debut. (Aug.)