Tangles

February 15, 2012
The power of this graphic memoir is not that its story about a family dealing with Alzheimer's is so extraordinary, but that it has become so ordinary. In her first book, Canadian writer and cartoonist Leavitt shows her mother agreeing to have her experiences with the disease documented because "[m]aybe this will help other families!" And likely it will, letting those experiencing the dementia of someone they love know what to expect, and to reassure that the tangled emotions they feel in response--anger, frustration, devotion, humor--are inevitable. Though this is primarily an account of the author's experiences as her mother becomes all but emotionally unrecognizable, it is also a narrative spanning two three generations of complicated family dynamics. Leavitt illustrates significant differences between her mother's closeness with her sisters and how the disease affects those relationships, and the contrasting tension between the author and her sister. It shows the strains that Alzheimer's puts on everything--from the sufferer's well being and sense of purpose to a loving marriage to the physical demands of caring for someone who can no longer care for herself. The narrative is human, honest, loving and occasionally even funny. "I created this book," Leavitt writes in the introduction, "to remember her as she was before she got sick, but also to remember her as she was during her illness, the ways in which she was transformed and the ways in which parts of her endured. As my mother changed, I changed too, forced to reconsider my own identity as a daughter and as an adult and to recreate my relationship with my mother." Not simply the story of a disease, but of the flawed, complex, intelligent people whose lives it transformed.

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May 15, 2012

The neurofibrillary tangles within the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients refers also, in this title, to the tangled "boings" of hair characteristic of the women in Leavitt's close-knit, intellectual family. Her Harvard-educated teacher mother, Midge, began to show signs of the disease at age 52, and it progressed over the next six years through unpredictable stages of knowing to unknowing, recognition to cluelessness, beguiling affection to hostility to vapid cheer to no-being. Meanwhile, Leavitt cries, writes, and draws, finally crafting the whole into this debut composed of vignettes of family history and Midge's decline. In dialog, she captures the oddly alluring poetry spilling from Midge's compromised persona: "Oh broccoli, who are simple." VERDICT Says Leavitt, "Our parents taught us, as very young children, that language, words, and books belonged to us, that they were exciting and powerful." Pairing words with simply drawn, evocative line art, Leavitt has crafted a glowing, heart-wrenching memorial to the woman who gave her such a gift. Useful for anyone with an Alzheimer's patient among family or friends, for health-care professionals, and for graphic arts programs as an example of how simple art can tell a powerful story. So far, the only published Alzheimer's-related graphic novel--and highly recommended.--M.C.

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