The Imposter's Daughter

Sandell’s choice of elements tells her story successfully using background narration accompanied by illustrated anecdotes. Whatever the narration box at the top states, the series of illustrated boxes below acts out. A good example (though there ‘s a good one on every page throughout), is when she starts the section “Good-bye Doubt” on page 186. The narration box reads “ I was in Toronto to do another interview. When I returned to my hotel room, I dialed Ben.” Below this unfolds her strained conversation with her boyfriend in which she begs to get back together with him. The tension in this kind of background narration lies in the expectations it creates. When reading a traditional novel, the narrator doesn’t lay out a situation and then give an example of that situation again and again in a sequence, the story is more woven. This graphic novel employs the background narration/anecdote formula over and over again in a way that may not feel seamless but still has it’s own rhythm. In this way, the primary criterion of truth is that which is explicated in each of the animated panels; the images show what the narrator lays out flatly and brings it to light.

The tone throughout Sandell’s book stays light and conversational even throughout the dark moments. The foundation of this tale is how shocking and true it all is, and how shocked Laurie is in each stage of finding out the disquieting facts about her dad. Regardless of how strong she feels, the light in the novel never wavers, that is, the pictures are always brightly lit, and she is never self deprecating or shy about any aspect of this memoir. Perhaps it is the association I have between brightly colored comic books and superheroes  that makes this brightly colored graphic novel seem light in tone throughout. Sandell never judges herself, she is more introspective than critical. When she recounts her four years of traveling, she describes the experience more as a fractured identity problem than a problem with her as a person. On page 57 she has a multiple box description of each of her split identities. Sandell shows herself as a product of her father’s lying parenting job without directly pointing a finger at him through the whole book. It is interesting to see a concept revealing subtly and slowly throughout a book that is made up of to the point sketches.