2016 book 139

Nadja Spiegelman's I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This
With this outstanding work, Spiegelman--daughter of Art Spiegelman--enters the family business of writing about family. But instead of rehashing the stories told by her father, she's focused on her mother, and her mother's family, and in fact four generations of complicated mother-daughter relationships. There is so much good stuff here, particularly on the nature of memory, and the writing itself is beautiful and evocative. I did wish she didn't go quite so easy on her grandmother toward the end, but I suppose I can see why. This made me very thoughtful about the way we tell our stories and writer, and rewrite, our own histories. Very engaging. Content warning for mentions of sexual violence and emotional abuse. A/A-.