1. Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion, illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham
2. Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, by Alison Bechdel
3. Demon Hunts, by C.E. Murphy
4. Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
5. The Foot Book, by Dr. Suess
6. Blood Magic, by Tessa Gratton
7. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel
8. The Game of Boxes: Poems, by Catherine Barnett
Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, by Alison Bechdel
Are You My Mother? is a meta-memoir in graphic novel format, which on the surface is about Bechdel’s mother. However, it is also about Bechdel’s therapy process, her relationships with her lovers, the history of psychonanalysis (particularly in regards to Donald Winnicott), Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, and the act of writing memoirs itself and how it effects the lives of those you write about.
This book has layers upon layers. How we feel about the past and our family is not linear. Disparate events, having no immediate relation to one another in reality, come together in out mind and combine into an emotional arc. The narrative here explores and loops, more like a thesis than a story. Sometimes Bechdel presents a conversation with her mother, then drifts away to talk about Winnicott’s work and writing on to a few scenes of her in therapy sessions, only to come back later to that same conversation with her mother, which now has a new light based on the new information.
The tone of the narrative is analytical, and Bechdel seems to be distanced from her own history as she tries to put the pieces together. There is no melodrama here. Bechdel neither condemns nor idolizes her mother in these pages. Nor does she condemn nor idolize herself.
One of the major themes of this book comes from Winnicott and his work on self-other, specifically how the mother becomes the self for babies and vice versa, as well as the concept of mirroring. I remember thinking while reading how strange it was that Bechdel was writing a memoir about her mother that turned out to be more about herself. But as I continued and learned more about Winnicott’s work on self-other and mirroring, this began to make perfect sense. Are not memoirs truly about the self, being from our own perspective anyway? And if as children we incorporate the mother into the self, then by writing about herself, Bechdel is also writing about her mother. This book seems to be a way for her to disentangle her self from her mother.
You can see in the image below an example of her art, where after finding a sequence of photographs of how she performed literal mirroring of her mother as a baby. She’s placed them in what she perceived was the correct sequence and has drawn them into the comic. Overlaid with the images, she narrates her own actions as a baby, while she quotes from Winnicott’s work on mirroring, and incorporates part of a phone conversation with her mother. Many, many layers, all in just two pages.
Another aspect of mirroring is revealed in the ways Bechdel projected her need for mothering onto her therapists and her lovers. Behavior that is only understood after the fact, through this kind of analysis.
I was deeply fascinated by this book, which may not have moved me emotionally, but had the gears of my mind churning. I’m sure reading it again would reveal new layers to the narrative, new understandings. And now now that I’ve read this book, I’m dying to read her first memoir about her father, Fun Home (which she discusses in Are You My Mother?). If this is a sign of the quality of her work, I definitely want to read more.
[Cross-posted to my livejournal. You are welcome to comment either here or there.]
Reading Stats for 2012
Total Books Read – 100
Total Fiction – 72
SF/Fantasy/Horror* – 38
General/Misc – 24
Classics – 6
Mystery/Noir – 4
*SF/F/H grouped together because it’s too much of a headache to mentally debate which book falls into which category.
SubCategories**
Young Adult – 17
Short Stories Collections – 13
Audio Books – 10
Digital/Ounline – 1
**These numbers does not contribute to overall total as they also fall into the alternate categories.
Total Nonfiction – 8
Literary & Art Criticism/Creation – 4
Science & Health – 2
Memoir – 1
Miscellaneous – 1
Comics/Graphic Novels – 11
Poetry – 9
*
My Favorite 10 Books Read in 2012
(in no particular order)
– Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman
– Deathless, by Catherynne M Valente
– The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker
– Imaginary Girls, by Nova Ren Suma
– The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
– The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
– China Mountain Zhang, by Maureen F McHugh
– The Hobbit: 10th Anniversary Edition, by JRR Tolkien
– I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, by Steve Earle
– The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories, by Tessa Gratton, Maggie Stiefvater, and Brenna Yovanoff
Best Science Fiction Book
I’ll go with The Man Who Fell to Earth,
by Walter Tevis, because I just loved the subtlety of the tale of an
alien on earth. It was so much the plot but the overall feeling of
isolation and alienation.
Best Fantasy Book
I’m really torn between Seraphina and Deathless. They were both fantastic books that I want to own and read again.
Best Graphic Novel
Easily Daytripper, by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. Amazing art with a moving story and creative plot structure.
Best Poetry Book
Hard to decide. I loved both Love in a Time of Robot Apocalypse, by David Perez, and No Surrender, by Ai.
Best Nonfiction Book
Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach. How she makes the gross and uncomfortable underbelly of science bit respectable and hilarious I’ll never know.
Worst Book
A toss up between Rick Spears and Rob G.’s graphic novel Dead West and Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Neither had much character development or soul, as far as I could see.
*
What were your favorite books of the year? What were your least favorite?
[Cross-posted to my livejournal. If you feel inclined, you may comment either here or there.]
Books Completed in December, Part II
1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (audio book), by Robert M. Pirsig
2. Dune, by Frank Herbert
3. The Man Who Fell to Earth, by Walter Tevis
4. The Diamond of Darkhold: The Fourth Book of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau
5. The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories, by Tessa Gratton, Maggie Stiefvater, and Brenna Yovanoff
6. Krik? Krak!, by Edwidge Danticat
7. Nova, by Samuel R. Delany
8. Coping with Color-Blindness, by Odeda Rosenthal and Robert H. Phillips
9. The Final Solution: A Story of Detection, by Michael Chabon
10. Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
11. The Whistling Toilets, by Randy Powell
Jane Austen Marathon
My sister, Pilar, was in a mood yesterday — happy, but bored, floating around the house, poking me in the ribs, doing whatever she could to entertain herself.
This boredom led her to throw on Mansfield Park (from 1999), a movie she and I both love. Though the movie follows the plot of the book, one could argue that the additions and subtractions to the movie don’t necessarily follow the spirit of the book. The movie drops some of the propriety, revealing some playfulness, and slips in some commentary on the slave trade, which as I recall doesn’t exist in the book. I can see why these things might bother die hard Austen fans, but I enjoy the choice of actors in the movie and the style of cinematography, so I think the movie stands as a great movie on it’s own, as a story separate from the book.
Next up my sister threw Persuasion (2007) into the DVD player, because it’s her new favorite Austen movie and she insisted that I see it. I haven’t read the book, but I need to. The story is unusual, because the two main characters know each other already, because Anne Elliot was persuaded by family and friends to drop her engagement to Mr. Wentworth, who had little fortune at the time. Eight years later, their paths cross again, and there is a large share of hurt and awkwardness and cruelty between them. I love these kinds of stories, because there’s something so fascinating to me about existing intimacies, as opposed to new flirtations.
The style of the movie is great. Many scenes involve our heroine sitting with her back to a group of people talking. They speak, either not knowing she can hear or not realizing that their words affect her, but the angle of the camera draws us into her space as outsider, and it’s very moving. Also, the ending = love.
Since we were already on a role with the Jane Austen movies, we decided to keep it up. So we put in Sense and Sensibility, the BBC miniseries from 2008. My sister is still very much attached to the Kate Winslet/Emma Thompson version from 1995, which I also enjoy. But despite the shocking (and unnecessary) opening sequence, I ended up falling in love with this new miniseries. The actresses are younger, closer to the ages of the actual characters in the books. It’s kind of a quieter depiction, the acting more subtle, though it’s been ages since I’ve seen the 1995 version. This miniseries actually made me believe that Marianne Dashwood could fall for Colonel Brandon, something other versions couldn’t do. So, yeah, fantastic.
We intended to conclude the night with the 2005 movie version of Pride & Prejudice, with Keira Knightley and Mathew Macfayden (another one I love for being exactly what it is, even if it doesn’t follow the book exactly). However Sense and Sensibility was longer than I thought it would be and by then it had got too late in the evening.
It was a great night of Jane Austen movies, though, and my sister and I had a great time chatting about the books and movies. We have another night planned of watching first Becoming Jane, followed by Miss Austen Regrets. I’d also like to do a marathon of watching several versions of Pride and Prejudice in a row, though that would be an all day event if the miniseries is included.