French Girl

Poet and memoirist Kercheval (Space) makes a vibrant graphic debut in this gathering of loosely connected reveries on family history. Pithy, introspective vignettes recall a childhood sidelined by illness and a back brace, and marked by her parents’ WWII wartime traumas. Kercheval’s father maintains a haunted reserve, while her mother, who served on a ship transporting wounded soldiers “who had lost limbs. Or their minds,” lapses into drinking and depression. Kercheval writes with a musing, inquisitive voice but also embroiders her accounts with fairy tale flourishes. The description of the dozens of antique clocks displayed in her friend Jackie’s house gives way to a journey through a Narnia-like door to a distant forest; elsewhere, there are pricked fingers and glass coffins. When Kercheval’s mother later struggles with Alzheimer’s, she too braids fantasy and memory, recalling a fearsome wolf that once saved her from appendicitis. Kercheval’s arresting, mostly full page pastel illustrations possess a dreamlike quality reminiscent of Matisse and Chagall (with nods to Cocteau). These evocative personal allegories unearth the knotted roots feeding a very particular family lore. Readers will be beguiled. (Sept.)