The title caught my attention with the addition/editing of A >true Memoir. I was to find in reading that our author's quest to find out the truth about her larger-then-life father was also to lead her to discover the truth about her capacity to participate in life, forgive, understand, as well as uncover the inner workings of her immediate family and her father's distant family in South America.
First, let's look at how the images in the story were presented. The drawings were colorful, the set-up for scenes were written up at the top of the frame, with dialogue in all caps (emphasis in bold) in talk boxes. The representation of Laurie intrigued me the most as she grew older. In key scenes with her father, there were times she was represented first as a woman, then her face softening and resembling her more as a young girl. pages 77 thru 79 captured it; subtle, but there.
Being the oldest daughter, her father sort of takes her on as a project, someone to teach; almost as thought she should have been his son. Not knowing at a young age whether her father's stories are fact or fantasy, she believes him and puts him on a pedestal. Even his eventual job loss and quirky behavior (storing items in the basement as though preparing for doomsday) seem somewhat normal initially. All this starts to change when she turns 12. My impression is the change in her father's behavior towards her signals that he is paranoid that in Laurie's growing up years, she may discover the truth about him, or at least question his stories and authority over her.
I was disturbed by her mother's and middle sister's reaction to the fights between father and daughter. It seemed to me that mother knew something was not right with her husband, but he was her husband do or die and she was going to "stand by her man" and disguises the noise of the father-daughter fights in the basement by playing her cello. Laurie's middle sister knows something is wrong, but stays out of it by remaining in her room. Throughout this stage of the relationship with Laurie and her father, all I could think was "what a fucked up family this is." Mom knows her husband is more than likely mentally ill and mentally AND physically abusing their oldest daugher; others just ignore it.
Laurie's father's stories ARE larger than life. When she realizes these are not the truth, she essentially divorces herself from her family and embarks on four years of her effort to live larger than the life she has had up to that point. She returns and then makes peace with her dad; but this to me was a fabricated peace as she was wanting to get to the truth of who he was and needed to talk to him to get that information. The subsequent drama with her publishing the story about him really drove home how her mother knew what type of man her husband was, but she was going to stand by him and protect him come what may.
Considering whether he was mentally ill was an area in Laurie's story that I wish she had explored more. Her father had behavior that could have been bi-polar, manic-depressive, paranoid-schizophrenic, or who-knows-what-else. Certainly, he had abandonment issues from his childhood, and that could have been looked at. His capacity to charm people then lie or wheedle them out of money, use his daughters' identities for credit card fraud, his attempt to take from his step-sister after their father's death showed me a capacity for sociopathic behavior. Even with the knowledge of lawsuits, credit card fraud, and outright lies, Laurie's mother and sisters tend to gloss over the entire mess and reframe it in a nicer shade. Was this his influence over them? Their anger with Laure? Their effort to sugarcoat a truth they did not want to face? I wanted to know!
Instead, the story goes into Laurie's addiction to sleeping pills and wine. I was curious about more of the depth of her transformation from her stay at the treatment center, but the only thing we were given substantial information on was the family visit. I had the feeling that during that visit, her father was only playing a role. Heck, he had been playing roles his entire life, from the stories and detective work that had been done to expose the veracity of those stories. It's what he does!
Overall, this was a good memoir; however, this reader wanted more detail, more depth, more about what made Laurie and her dad tick inside.
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