A graphic novel

Title: Maus: A Survivor's Tale (My Father Bleeds History) & Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began
Author: Art Spiegelman
Publication date(s): 1986 and 1991

The graphic novel is not a format I've explored before the reading challenge prompted me to do so. While I toyed with the idea of visiting an old friend (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), I believe I was always destined to read Maus. I was working in a library when Maus was first published back during my high school years. I remember the news stories and the buzz about it but hadn't read it until now. 

Maus and its sequel Maus II are the biographical stories of Vladek Spiegelman told and illustrated by his son, cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Vladek begins his story during his days as a young man in Poland in the 1930s. During a series of visits between father and son, Vladek tells Art of meeting and marrying Art's mother in pre-war Poland, of the successful businesses he built up and of Art's maternal grandparents' wealth and opulent lifestyle and then the war ... 

The cartoonist draws the Jews (including Vladek and Art) as mice, the Nazis are cats and the non-Jews Poles and Germans alike are pigs.

The first book details Vladek's efforts to shield his wife Anja and her family from the worst of the early years of the Polish invasion. The family hides for many months before they find themselves at the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In one particularly powerful panel, Vladek begs his wife to carry on:

"No Darling! To die, it's easy ... but you have to struggle for life!"

 I raced through the first book in just a few hours and found myself needing to know the rest of the Spiegelmans' story. How did they come to be in Rego Park, New York in the 1970s? 

The second book picks up where the first ended. Vladek tells the story to his impatient son who is

eager to capture it all in the comic. During the telling of the story, we also come to understand the relationship between father and son. Vladek is remarried (having buried Art's mother following her suicide many years earlier) and has a difficult relationship with his second wife, Mala, also a Holocaust survivor.

I found myself feeling sorry for the elder Spiegelman who seemed to want nothing more than to spend time with his adult son. But Art was bothered by his father's requests of his time (help him put in the storm windows, balance the checkbook, do the marketing) and seemed to want nothing more than to pry the story of war from his father. It was quite heart breaking in fact. 

I've read four books during the challenge that deal with different aspects of World War II (three of which were memoirs from Holocaust survivors). It still shocks and outrages me. Though it took me nearly 30 years, I'm glad I finally found time for Mr. Spiegelman's story. 

Three stars

Next challenge: A book by a female author