Italian comics master Manuele Fior plays with form and style in the enormously entertaining Blackbird Days

But “Gare De L’Est” doesn’t represent the entirety of Blackbird Days. While “Gare De L’Est” hits notes of sincerity, simplicity, and sweetness, other stories swerve into more delicate territory. In “Grandma And Grandson,” Fior tells the story of a young Laotian woman fleeing war for France in the 1960s, as well as the story of her adult grandson reflecting on his relationship to his Laotian and French identities. Unlike “Gare De L’Est,” which Fior illustrates with more emphasis on speed and movement, he illustrates “Grandma And Grandson” in accordance with this story’s more somber tone. Details are reduced to smears, and images are made to represent impressions of moods rather than a record of an event. The technique is affective, though one gets the sense that Fior could have done more with more space.

Fior, however, tells most of the book’s stories in a third aesthetic register, which is composed of various attempts to balance these somber and jovial tones. The stand-out from this third register is probably the collection’s second story, “Class Trip.” A teacher accompanies her class on a trip to Paris. We get the impression that her personal life is strained, and her students—not considering that she has a life outside of theirs—disrespect and belittle her. In some ways, the story feels fully matured; it has a clear emotional core, and Fior manages to powerfully relate it to his readers.

But in other ways, it functions more like a sketch—like a fragment of some larger project. That is to say, the story’s most promising moments, while striking, are fleeting. But, like all the stories in the collection, “Class Trip” feature Fior’s stylistic flourishes: humor, comfort, elegance, wit, and vitality. Each story offers readers these traits in varying amounts, but even the smallest dose of these qualities, in concert with one another, can result in a moving, soothing experience.