Pawn Shop by Joey Esposito

Published by Z2 Comics on November 26, 2015

A lot of books have been written about New York City and what it means to the people who reside there. Pawn Shop touches on a handful of lives, isolated people surrounded by other isolated people, who manage in ways that are large and small to make connections with other New Yorkers.

Pawn Shop is a graphic novel told in four chapters that read like linked stories. To a greater or lesser extent, each chapter revolves around a pawn shop. The first is narrated by an elderly man who can’t leave the city behind. He moved to Long Island after his wife died but he keeps coming back, despite his feeling that the city has moved on without him. Moving on is something he can’t do, as evidenced by his daily excursions to the city where his memories linger. One of his memories is symbolized by an object that represents more than the object itself. The story is a touching examination of loss and of moving on.

The second chapter is told from the point of view of a regular visitor at the pawn shop who is comforted by the safety of his daily routine. Part of that routine involves a minor character in the first story. But routines are limiting. The young man wonders whether he will find the courage to put his life on a different path.

Near the end of the second chapter, the young man encounters a young woman on a train who is the focus of the third chapter, which circles back to the old man in the first chapter and to the events that bring him to the pawn shop. A woman who appears tangentially in the first two chapters narrates the last one. Along with the old man in the first chapter, she has the kind of karmic experience that turns a big city into a small place.

Each of the four central characters is undergoing (or deciding whether to undergo) a life-changing transition. Each closes a door, but that creates the possibility of another door opening, a door to a less suffocating life. Each character benefits from connections to the other characters, often in ways that they will never understand. New Yorkers might feel isolated, but Pawn Shop tells us that they are never alone. Maybe the novel’s two karmic moments are hokey, maybe the message is a little obvious, but in the end, I didn’t care. This short graphic novel is emotionally honest and more moving than most of the 400 page novels I’ve read.

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