This is the book length memoir written by the comics artist Liana Finck. I previously read and reviewed her book, Excuse Me, which is a sketchbook of ideas, which I liked, but felt was limited in many ways. This book is not limited, and I liked it, and I have to imagine many of you will too.
This book is as much about writing a memoir as it is about the story it tells. It’s mostly about the lives and relationship of her parents. Her mother starts off in an abusive marriage and finds her way out. She is also an artist who finds her working life constrained by the external limits placed on her through a male-dominated career field. Her father is an extraordinarily normal seeming man who’s inner weirdness takes a long time to come to the fore, and a much shorter time to die. Finck imagines this inner life through the memoir.
This book is challenging because it’s about the false starts in life and the false starts in art. Because we get to see these false starts as would chapters in her book about her parents, we begin to better understand who authors and artists make those choices that have to become permanent fixtures of their work before an audience is really allowed to see the final product. It has the effect of almost being an artist’s notebook, while having the additional added joy of a polished final version.
(photo: https://www.amazon.com/Passing-Human-Graphic-Liana-Finck/dp/0525508929/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=passing+for+human&qid=1570367345&sr=8-1)