I resisted these two for a long time - the story of the Holocaust told in cartoon form? But enough people recommended them to me to make me try them. The story is told by the son of a man who lived through Hitler's Europe, and is now an embittered widower. Spiegelman tries to understand his father while - certainly at the beginning - his antipathy is apparent. But he takes you through the war in all its horrors (including the relative in the camps who informs on his fellow Jews for favours from the Germans). It's an extraordinary feat that you do begin to see the characters as people (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice) and their dreadful history is as moving and heartbreaking as if it were done in a more ordinary manner. Perhaps, oddly, more so.
(Julie Higgins - bwl 7 February 2001 ) |
