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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
After Rosalie dies suddenly and unexpectedly, Tom and Leela are unmoored. They drift through friends' houses and different parts of the country, all the while trying to sell their coop apartment in NYC. If this book is about something else other than death, grief, mourning, and the-life-after, it is about real estate sales in NYC. There are no real answers, how can there be?, about the sudden loss of a child and what one is supposed to do after that, but there is a lesson to be learned about NYC coops: don't buy in a coop (unless you'll never need to sell it).
Recommended for those who like bunnies, trees, turtles, butterflies, and pushing broken cars up a hill.
Recommended for those who like bunnies, trees, turtles, butterflies, and pushing broken cars up a hill.
[dumb goodreads just ATE my original review.]
I didn't really want to read this book. But it was on the coffee table and I'm not into commitment this summer. Holy shit, I am glad I did. This book is weird in the best ways. It is iterative and fractured, like grief. And Hart uses cartoon images as refrains, recontextualizing them in each presentation and literally showing us how he thinks.
I thought I was going to teach "[b:The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye|25733982|The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye|Sonny Liew|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439837421s/25733982.jpg|21998008]," but now I think I might teach this. It does similar things with nesting stories and destabilizing reality, and I think it might be more accessible to my students. Maybe? I'll just have to poll some kids real casual like to see which book they would rather dig into and rip apart.
Also, I cried for half of it. Goddamn.
I didn't really want to read this book. But it was on the coffee table and I'm not into commitment this summer. Holy shit, I am glad I did. This book is weird in the best ways. It is iterative and fractured, like grief. And Hart uses cartoon images as refrains, recontextualizing them in each presentation and literally showing us how he thinks.
I thought I was going to teach "[b:The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye|25733982|The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye|Sonny Liew|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439837421s/25733982.jpg|21998008]," but now I think I might teach this. It does similar things with nesting stories and destabilizing reality, and I think it might be more accessible to my students. Maybe? I'll just have to poll some kids real casual like to see which book they would rather dig into and rip apart.
Also, I cried for half of it. Goddamn.
Until you experience it there is no way to really conceptualize what it feels like to lose a child. Really there's no way to conceptualize losing a loved one period until you've gone through it. I think that's because of all the emotions we experience grief is the one that is truly the most personal and thus subjective. No one grieves in exactly the same way. I know there are supposed to be stages and we all cry of course but the way we experience and express loss and grief strikes me as unique to the individual as a finger print.
Tom Hart, the author of this unique, bleak memoir, lost his beloved daughter Rosalie before she turned two years old. One day he was reveling in the bright chaos only a toddler can create and the next day she was gone.
Hart and his wife spend the majority of the book in a gloom shrouded quest for answers. Why was Rosalie taken? How long will they feel the pain of her passing? What do they do now? That they know they will never find any answers makes their story all the more gut wrenching for the reader. They travel to a grief retreat and spend weeks staying with friends around the country but they do it in a haze, like zombies going through the motions of a half remembered former life. Everything is a reminder of what they've lost or a portent they should have recognized that might have saved her.
A great deal of the story's impact derives from Hart's focus on the little things. The frustration of trying to sell their apartment is a major focus in the narrative and ends up being a powerful symbol of the helplessness and sense of losing all control of their lives they're already experiencing. He notes the first time he touches a child after Rosalie's dies, the first night he doesn't sleep with her picture under his pillow, the first book he brings himself to read. He writes about the dreams he and his wife and even their friends have about Rosalie.
Hart's art work is as bleak as the story he's sharing. His grief is black and white and full of people with empty eyes standing in perpetual, inky shadow. Hart and his wife seem to almost disappear at times into dark, scratched out portraits so distorted its occasionally hard to make out their features. Rosalie is the only character ever depicted in a joyful way. She is fat and full of smiles and surrounded by light the way she will doubtless remain in the memories of her parents. There's an unfinished feel to many of the scenes like they're being recalled from a half remembered dream or as if they're meant to convey the fading of memories over time.
This is not one of those books that you review and say "it made me want to hold my children and never let them go." It almost feels like it would insulting to say that when discussing such a raw and uncensored portrait of pain. I have trouble with any literature that focuses on terrible things happening to children but this was not one of those reads. Perhaps because it is not a story about what happened to Rosalie. Its a story of two lives torn to pieces by her death. I can relate to the fear of losing a child but as Hart says toward the end of the story the worst thing that could possibly happen to him has already happened so I didn't feel fear or even anxiety for my own children because he is past that point. The horrible thing, the death of his child, has already happened. It doesn't get any worse because it can't.
This is probably one of the most profound things I've read in a long time. This is grief turned into poetry and goofy cartoons of a bubbly child with bright smiles who loved "My Neighbor Totoro" and watching turtles and doing water color.
Can there be a stronger testament to how much this man loved his child then sharing the pain her leaving him caused? Because that's what this book is really about. The indescribable love of a parent for his child seen through the sorrow of the aftermath of her death. The saddest love story I think I've ever read.
Tom Hart, the author of this unique, bleak memoir, lost his beloved daughter Rosalie before she turned two years old. One day he was reveling in the bright chaos only a toddler can create and the next day she was gone.
Hart and his wife spend the majority of the book in a gloom shrouded quest for answers. Why was Rosalie taken? How long will they feel the pain of her passing? What do they do now? That they know they will never find any answers makes their story all the more gut wrenching for the reader. They travel to a grief retreat and spend weeks staying with friends around the country but they do it in a haze, like zombies going through the motions of a half remembered former life. Everything is a reminder of what they've lost or a portent they should have recognized that might have saved her.
A great deal of the story's impact derives from Hart's focus on the little things. The frustration of trying to sell their apartment is a major focus in the narrative and ends up being a powerful symbol of the helplessness and sense of losing all control of their lives they're already experiencing. He notes the first time he touches a child after Rosalie's dies, the first night he doesn't sleep with her picture under his pillow, the first book he brings himself to read. He writes about the dreams he and his wife and even their friends have about Rosalie.
Hart's art work is as bleak as the story he's sharing. His grief is black and white and full of people with empty eyes standing in perpetual, inky shadow. Hart and his wife seem to almost disappear at times into dark, scratched out portraits so distorted its occasionally hard to make out their features. Rosalie is the only character ever depicted in a joyful way. She is fat and full of smiles and surrounded by light the way she will doubtless remain in the memories of her parents. There's an unfinished feel to many of the scenes like they're being recalled from a half remembered dream or as if they're meant to convey the fading of memories over time.
This is not one of those books that you review and say "it made me want to hold my children and never let them go." It almost feels like it would insulting to say that when discussing such a raw and uncensored portrait of pain. I have trouble with any literature that focuses on terrible things happening to children but this was not one of those reads. Perhaps because it is not a story about what happened to Rosalie. Its a story of two lives torn to pieces by her death. I can relate to the fear of losing a child but as Hart says toward the end of the story the worst thing that could possibly happen to him has already happened so I didn't feel fear or even anxiety for my own children because he is past that point. The horrible thing, the death of his child, has already happened. It doesn't get any worse because it can't.
This is probably one of the most profound things I've read in a long time. This is grief turned into poetry and goofy cartoons of a bubbly child with bright smiles who loved "My Neighbor Totoro" and watching turtles and doing water color.
Can there be a stronger testament to how much this man loved his child then sharing the pain her leaving him caused? Because that's what this book is really about. The indescribable love of a parent for his child seen through the sorrow of the aftermath of her death. The saddest love story I think I've ever read.
Devastating graphic memoir wherein a father describes losing his less than 2 year old daughter.
It's not that I'm being drawn to other people's grief, but I am conscious of trying to understand loss and finding meaning in life thereafter.
It's not that I'm being drawn to other people's grief, but I am conscious of trying to understand loss and finding meaning in life thereafter.
The story of Rosalie, a little girl who died suddenly before her second birthday. John Darnielle calls it "the bravest act of writing." I'm inclined to agree. Such a beautiful little book. We speak her name.
In many ways Rosalie Lightning is a powerful graphic memoir, but in as many ways it lacks the cohesion and beauty necessary to create a universally moving portrayal of loss. Clearly, this is an extremely personal work, so I'm hesitant to speak ill of it. Nor should I speak ill, as my only complaint about the book is a matter of perspective and all my other feelings toward the book are either positive or neutral. There are images in this memoir that I doubt will ever leave me (certainly, I will never look at a Corn Maze the same); Hart has done a fantastic job isolating some of Rosalie's most striking moments and making them light up on the page. It's the jumble of the story that I think keeps the reader at a distance. These are the thoughts of a grieving parent who is remembering the most warming and sorrowful moments of his daughter's life. It's an important work for him and his family. It's a beautiful tribute to a little girl. But it's perhaps a little too close to the loss to give the wider audience a proper perspective. This is a memoir of what happens on the inside of a person suffering loss. That's not a bad thing, by any means, but in a book such as this, I would guess that the hope is that the reader feels a strong attachment to the child, not so much to the dark turmoil of the author.
This is one rough read. What do you do when your child dies? Especially one so young and so suddenly? Tom and his wife Leela face exactly this terrifying reality. The insanity, pointlessness, and hopelessness are all described in an abstract manner that makes some sense but at the same time is littered with something the reader can't understand and maybe the writer can't either.
It's a devastating book - I may have almost cried - but it was well worth the pain.
It's a devastating book - I may have almost cried - but it was well worth the pain.
A beautiful yet terribly sad book about loss. I can't stop thinking about it.
Wow. This is an amazingly affecting graphic novel about a father's grief. Utterly heartbreaking and beautiful.
This might be the most devastating thing I've ever read. Hart and his wife unexpectedly lost their nearly 2 year old daughter, and this graphic novel chronicles the early stages of their grief. The torment that pours out of these pages is nearly overwhelming. While the artwork is basically crude sketches, they are imbued with such powerful images of mourning that it's infinitely more effective than a more polished style could ever be.
This is the second book about the death of a child I've read this week, and the difference between the two is astonishing. Where one (Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao) gets mired in surrealist blather and writerly tricks, this is simply a raw, almost reportorial account of every parent's nightmare. Hart depicts the hollowness of grief and the search through one's former joys for comfort (movies, books, or music once beloved that now all seem at best meaningless and at worst a portent and symbol of personal loss). He talks about the ways that everyday interactions become a painful act of concealment and isolation. And he talks about the ways that joy creeps back in, even in the darkest hours, although never sugarcoating the fact that the pain is now a permanent part of life.
An incredible feat of remembrance and memorial, this book should be required reading for anyone who ever experienced grief or for those who have somehow avoided it, as an eye-opening empathetic tunnel into the worlds of the people around us who have not been so lucky. It's nearly unreadable as a parent, which emphasizes just how essential it is.
This is the second book about the death of a child I've read this week, and the difference between the two is astonishing. Where one (Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao) gets mired in surrealist blather and writerly tricks, this is simply a raw, almost reportorial account of every parent's nightmare. Hart depicts the hollowness of grief and the search through one's former joys for comfort (movies, books, or music once beloved that now all seem at best meaningless and at worst a portent and symbol of personal loss). He talks about the ways that everyday interactions become a painful act of concealment and isolation. And he talks about the ways that joy creeps back in, even in the darkest hours, although never sugarcoating the fact that the pain is now a permanent part of life.
An incredible feat of remembrance and memorial, this book should be required reading for anyone who ever experienced grief or for those who have somehow avoided it, as an eye-opening empathetic tunnel into the worlds of the people around us who have not been so lucky. It's nearly unreadable as a parent, which emphasizes just how essential it is.