the impostor's daughter: melissa sipin

Micheline Marcom once told me last semester that there are books in your life that are "right"--perfectly right-- for that ephemeral and particular and youthful moment of your life. Maybe it's the way the book reflects the emotions processing or in need to process and divulge in you. Blankets, which was used in one of the examples in the syllabus, was perfect for my state in mind ten years ago in high school--it was about processing the loss of faith in Christianity, about the truth and the shadows via perceptions and Plato's cave, about falling and losing your firth love, and of course, the story was filtered through the Bildungsroman literary concept, the act of being a child and becoming an adult. I also read Catcher in the Rye during that intensified and youthful period, which had also impressed upon me a thousand of swirling emotions. But, to repeat Micheline, it doesn't mean that they're good books. Blankets and Catcher in the Rye were right for me at that age, and though I hold them both dearly to my heart and disagree with Micheline on their literary validity (I think they're still great books; she does not), I have to say that The Impostor's Daughter carries that same dilemma for me.

Had I read The Impostor's Daughter in high school or undergrad, maybe I would have loved it, or processed it with an adoring eye, or... well maybe it would've touched me more. But at this certain point of my life, this book didn't move me as much as Catcher or Blankets did. I know the point of these blogs is not whether or not we liked these books, that's hardly a topic of good conversation, but it does start an interesting discussion: even though I didn't like this book, did its craft succeed in the Bildungsroman genre? To me, it's a yes and a no.

It had technical craft. The sections paced effortlessly and I read it in twice in two different sittings. Her voice and character was engaging, her task of figuring out her father--and thus herself--relatable and intriguing. But it lacked "umph" for me. It lacked emotional integrity, and it has to do with the unfitting and almost cliché and indeterminate and "blah" ending. It has to do with her obsession over the relationship with Ben--which was, sure, interesting--but it lacked the emotional stirrings of a 'first' love (which she freely admitted to--she wasn't "in love with Ben" and you know what, I felt it. I felt the shallowness of the relationship and experienced nothing when it ended.) What excited me the most was her father and the father figure because he was exactly like my father--eccentric, a con artist, a liar, someone who took my social security number and filed for a numerous amount of credit cards, someone who kept secrets and more secrets--like a third wedding--but also someone who raised me and loved me and--in his own twisted way--gave me everything he could, and loved me as much as he could. The anger she felt toward him is the anger I felt toward my own father, but the way she processed it and filtered it through this graphic memoir, or mainly through her narrative arcs, was flat and shallow and disappointing. Her father was the star of this novel. Her anger, which I felt I should've felt more, was flatlined. I didn't quite understand it. So what he lied? My father lied to me. I missed the intensity and meaning of her quest to "expose him," and if it were just based on principals, I wasn't convinced.

Her addiction to ambien, however, was an intriguing narrative arc and it definitely kept me reading. I feel like I'm rambling here, but I do have a good point: the only time I felt like I really knew this character, or felt like she fully divulged herself to an audience and created a fully fleshed out protagonist was when she wrote of her troubles with sleeping pills and her process in conquering that problem. She felt real there, and I liked her, or at least, respected her and was convinced of her struggles. The struggle with her Dad? I didn't really believe it. I'm not even sure if she truly figured herself out at the end of this memoir. And maybe that's the point of it, and why, in some sense it did succeed--she ends on a very abrupt note. But it's a note that ends on a new beginning, on starting from scratch. Though I was surprised that the memoir ended on the last scene, with the Thanksgiving dinner, her father isolated still, and a focus on an image of her pen and a reflective statement to the beginning of the memoir--it's was a way to show the cyclical nature of the coming-of-age experience. We are constantly growing, ending certain points of our lives (especially at points where we give up or outgrow certain people and go back to the ones who we'll never outgrow--namely, our families) and starting these points all over again, holding onto the few things that will always be constant in our lives. Maybe Laurie didn't want to simply end the story. She wanted to show that even at the end, her and her family will keep on living, and this was simply a way to show how her family shifted.

I didn't hate the memoir. What I really appreciated was the craft of the primitive drawings. They were fun, light, and created a tonal easygoing-ness that made the novel a quick, fast-paced read. As a kid, I was a frequent reader of mangas, and as a teenager, I geeked out over V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and the like, and so it was refreshing for me to see a memoir that displayed itself as serious but still light-hearted and lovely. The nudity really took me by surprise, but in a good way. What really intrigued me were the panels where she focused specifically on one object or face or expression. The book's a very expressionistic memoir, and I liked that--it translated into a honesty that I believed.

But, at the same time, that honesty's well was too shallow for me. I'm not well-versed at the technicality of memoir, but a lot of her problems in this book seemed trivial. I just wish that Laurie displayed her struggle with her father's lies more convincingly, with more urgency. There was a lack of urgency in that struggle, and I really wasn't convinced at her protagonist's obsession and hurt over it. Maybe the problem was that the narrative arcs were too confined in neatly paneled vignettes, or maybe it was a problem of character development in Laurie's portrayed protagonist.

~m