3/14/2023 0 Comments Nadja the shadow of memoriesHer beautiful but cruel mother Josée, her creepy father Paul – one of the country’s leading plastic surgeons, who cherishes an “unhealthy” attraction to his daughter – and her two siblings, with whom she was in constant competition. The crisp lucidity of American writer Spiegelman’s prose in I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This and the ease with which she flits between the present and the past between the woman she’s interviewing – described intimately as “my mother” – and the as-yet unknown girl this woman once was – the unfamiliar “Françoise” – disguises the intelligence and elegance she has employed in the intertwining of the two.įrançoise fled France to escape her family. Unconsciously, mother and daughter replayed scenes from Françoise’s own traumatic adolescence – the details of which Spiegelman eventually uncovered in her 20s when she interviewed her mother about her life before her emigration to the United States, marriage and motherhood.Īs Françoise’s narrative unspools, we’re treated to the first indications that this is going to be a project of considerable astuteness. As Spiegelman hit puberty, however, the dynamic between them abruptly shifted. Luminous and magnetic, she held her offspring safely in a “force field” of love. She decried “timid women who washed their vegetables”, took her children (Spiegelman has a younger brother) swimming in the ocean during thunderstorms and made them eat dirt to build up their immune systems.
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