The narrator, drawn as an adult, covers her face with a polaroid of her father wearing medals of valor. Is Sandell implicating herself? Can the apple fall far from the tree? What is she hiding? More than her face? The "TRUE" caret is provocative. It is a clever cover and title, because it invites investigation and suggests that her identity is a work in progress.
We are all creating from scratch when we are exiled, or orphaned, or when we learn our parents are liars, or we stop believing in them, and life is-- to some degree --artificial in so far as we are making it up as we go along. At the same time, it is our story, our memoir, our "truth", with a caret.
In their technicolor simplicity and garishness, these panels read like a tv sitcom. The light hits everything at once, as if Sandell has slammed down a director's clapboard, and called "action".
I am struck by how megalomaniacal this medium can be. The storyteller who doesn't just demand control of the words, but also the images that otherwise might bubble forth in a reader's brain, a natural spring from the story is tightly controlled. (Detail: mattress spring: who wouldn't want to draw themselves in the action here, with the caption, "You were great last night?") From the first pages, though, Sandell's panels suggest that things are not what they seem. Just as a cul de sac in suburbia hides secrets and a darker truth, so must every bubble gum image in this book.
In Visions, the narrator looks at herself, standing next to her father, in the mirror. He lets her share in his deceit as she wears badges she hasn't earned, and she wonders, perhaps fairly, don't I already deserve these? The book is also a mirror, and so this panel is a mirror within a mirror. The mirror is an opportunity to recognize the decisions you make to ignore the signs, accept judgement, wear the uniform, take credit, even if it doesn't fit and you haven't jumped through all the hoops. (you=she)
The question I keep returning to is, "Do I sympathize?"
As far as form, I admire the comic illustrations. The heart that beats in heart shape outside the narrator's body, the simple lines that express "surprise!" the narrated"pat pat pat" of a hand on a pillow, or the dotted line that connect the narrator's eye to the father's cane (poor old dad!), or when the artist shrinks the frame to illustrate only the - literal- eyes. On page 81, in three sequential frames, the narrator's father shrinks in stature, and importance until he nearly disappears. On 97, the author visits the home of a celebrity who is larger than life, whose face on the wall is larger than a piano. (We already know, from the text, that the author has begun to prefer characters who are larger than life.) There are mulitiple moments where the author, through the images, leads her narrator to confront previously held beliefs, to recognize the flaws in her process and to question if what she prefers and chooses is really better.
Every once in awhile the text provides a bombshell:
"Whatever I was hoping to find I wasn't going to get it from my mother." Despite the fact that the narrator's mother has consistently offered a saner if blander alternative, her blindness does not translate to this form, so the narrator flies to Argentina to get to the bottom of it! By this time I am invested, for curiosity's sake, but it is also frustrating. There is a reason that this book is popular and compelling and called the Impostor's Daughter, and not My Sane, Still Standing There Mother. Who would read that??
Kristen
ReplyDeleteit's funny you asked the question, do i sympathize? which in a way is key to memoir--or is it just a good story and don't need to like the character. I think Laurie is unlikeable (which is great and a risk), so do we care about her. The lies of her father are sexy and fascinating until they destroy others--she is the same way; so your emphasizing the juxtaposition of the images says a lot
e
Hi, Kristin ~
ReplyDeleteI found myself returning to Laurie's mother throughout the book. I agree, she is blander than her father, and seemingly saner, or at least more stable, although perhaps anyone who's not constantly screaming and behaving like a pathological liar would seem the picture of sanity next to him...
Page 31 is the first place we see Laurie's father screaming at her, seemingly because he lost a stapler, and her mother's response is to tell him to take it to the basement, while she continues playing cello. Next, we see him screaming and calling Laurie names, while all the other family members quietly continue their own activities, including her mother on cello. By this time, he's throwing a bottle of Tab at Laurie. Laurie's mother both enables this behavior and ignores it, which does not seem like the sanest response to me, besides the fact that as her mother, she is obligated to protect Laurie. which she clearly neglects to do.
In the interview in the reading group guide, Sandell says that her mother played cello while her father screamed at her (Laurie), "then comfort me after the fact" (9). I am curious why she skipped that in the book. We don't see a lot of her mother and then she skips an opportunity to at least show us her mother doing something, anything that shows that she knows what is happening around her. We finally see that in the rehab scene, when her mother acknowledges that she hears that Laurie didn't feel protected as a child (221) and Laurie's father loses it a bit.
I'd like to read her mother's memoir. Because we see her so little, and she does not strongly interact with the reality surrounding her, I'm very curious about what her experience was. She seemed to know that her husband was a fraud, but she did not want to discuss it. I also think that her mother is such a mystery in the book because she's a mystery to Sandell. In the interview at the end of the book, she says "My mother is so unknowable to me, all I can do is speculate." Looking back, I can see she communicated clearly about that, because I'm certainly left with no idea who her mother is or what her experience was.
Thanks for bringing up her mother. I'd been thinking about it already, but your post was a springboard to more focus around her.
~Rhonda
I love the discussion about the mother going on here! I also had been thinking about the mother, as mothers often become side characters in most stories. Her mother reminds me of my own mother - loyal, private and loving.
ReplyDeleteReading this memoir, I somehow felt obligated to empathize with the narrator because she is so vulnerable with the reader. Though I struggled with my own empathy for situations that I could understand (since she shows us so much about how/why her story unfolds the way it does), yet...she does have a sense of very individual self righteousness that I cannot identify with as strongly. I think it was this individualism that challenged me in trying to connect with her during the story.
Thank you for sharing!
Shaina
Great points about sypathizing with characters, and bringing up Laurie's mother. I could not sympathize with her mother; she was a complicit participant in the home environment created by father. Initially, I thought she was fearful of him; ultimately, I came to a conclusion that for whatever reason (security, pity, personal issues, maybe love) her mother was going to gloss over and protect her husband, even when Laurie is obviously being mentally and physically abused by her dad. Quite an interesting family dynamic
ReplyDelete