I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This

The author, daughter of Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (Maus) and Françoise Mouly, a publisher and acclaimed art director at the New Yorker, places her family—particularly its women—under a high-powered microscope in this penetrating memoir. As a child, Speigelman often sensed that her mother’s family was “dangerous,” but her inquiries were brushed aside by the independent and hard-working Mouly, who suggested that she would enlighten her daughter at a later time. When Mouly finally sits down to describe her life in detail, the protective gloves come off. In heart-to-heart talks with her mother and with her grandmother (Josee, a divorcee who lives on a houseboat on the Seine) that take place over a number of years, Spiegelman probes the undercurrent of uneasiness she’s felt her whole life. Mouly fled her Parisian family at age 18, moving to New York to escape her mother’s criticism as well as her father’s inappropriate behaviors; she eventually turned her critical eye on her own daughter, who struggled with compulsive eating and other issues. When Spiegelman begins interviewing her grandmother, however, she finds a loving woman who doesn’t fit Mouly’s recollections. Memories overlap and contradict as the author unwinds the past; even some of Spiegelman’s memories, she realizes, may be imagined. As the three women own and apologize for past and present mistakes and misunderstandings, this intricate family tale evokes a growing sense that forgiveness and love are ultimately far more important than facts. (Aug.)