Laurie Sandell’s The
Impostor’s Daughter was a quick and easy read for me. I have not been an
avid graphic novel reader in the past, and honestly was quite excited to take a
serious peak into the genre—I think as a first graphic novel, yes, The Impostor’s Daughter allowed me to
easily take the structure of graphic novels as a whole. However, the general
content of the book felt like an elementary letdown, particularly if this
memoir is considered as a “coming of age” story.
Sandell’s relationship with her father is clearly the
centripetal force that drives the entire story, which we are brought into at
the same, inquisitive pace she lived as a young girl: who exactly is this man,
and why does Laurie treasure his guidance so intensely, outside of the general
realm of “this is my father, and therefore I would love his approval”? This
question isn’t really ever answered—instead, it felt as if we as readers were
taken on this journey towards nothing but a dead end. In fact, Sandell may have
never even answered this question for herself, as I’m not entirely certain that
she had resolved the issue in herself, and therefore never really 'came of age.' My ultimate question would be this: How do, or how can, we come of age when
we’ve spent so much time replicating or looking up to or building our lives
around another individual who is not ourselves? Sandell admits on more than one
occasion that she “knew just how to validate whatever identity they wanted to
create” (99), and therefore has not really ever understood how to validate the
self, and therefore couldn’t really come of age to any degree.
Regardless of the content and missing links in such, I
really did enjoy the structure of the graphic novel. The panels really remind
me of the pop art movement—the simplicity of each figure, place, or thing
allows the viewer to engage more drastically in the text, while placing a solid
visual context into the mix. We get a sense of character in each panel, but the
flatness of each tone is highly specific to each character and his/her attributes.
There aren’t too many colors and contrasts and just THINGS to absorb, and the
short versions reflect the simplistic nature of the drawings themselves,
ultimately allowing the reader to indulge in the story structure.
Lucille Raisch
Lucille,
ReplyDeleteyou bring up a lot of good points and i can see how the lack of resolution is frustrating. however, it's not as much a plot as it is a life that is fashioned as a plot, so the writer needs you to have her experience--which can be redundant, frustrating and unrequited. So going deeper into how she brought these to the surface give more insight into her.
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ReplyDeleteI like the idea that Sandell's story is easy to "indulge" in, especially considering how obsessively the narrator consumes tabloids (to the extent that she makes celebrity interviews her career.) I agree, the sensationalism present in the story made it totally absorbing; yet, throughout the beginning of the memoir, before Laurie's father was exposed as a fraud, I was constantly questioning how much of his stories were true, even while the narrator adamantly believes everything he says and even suggests he has involvement with the CIA. It's so weird to me what people choose to believe, and also why people care so much about other people's lives in the first place. Sandell's "easy read" at times mimics the qualities that make tabloids so appealing to some people- even people who seemingly possess good taste in literature for the most part, like our narrator.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the content is an "elementary letdown," though Sandell seems somewhat aware of this when she hears Ashley Judd's story on page 191. As opposed to a coming of age story, I read this more as a recovery story. Having just finished the graphic novel, I am wondering about what larger connections might be made- why is this an important story? A possible answer is that this graphic novel depicts an addict that appears to be functioning and has not yet fallen from the graces of her peers nor lost her job/apartment/belongings. Perhaps then, this novel subverts the stereotype of the addict.
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