Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Book Review: More weight given to the medium of 'graphic novel'....
Summary: 5 Stars
It's quite a lengthy graphic novel, and is an account of the Holocaust, with mice representing Jews, Cats as the Nazis, Americans as dogs and Pigs as the Polish. This is a brilliant conceit, and the writer makes full and effective use of it. This is harrowing and incredible, but very real and present and with very human, flawed characters that hit home beyond what a film or a book can do for a wide range of audience types. The illustrations aid the narrative, placing soft, engaging images and dark atmosphere into a bleak tale....It seems a very 'neat' story in places, but perhaps there is some memory allowance here. It's another important piece of historic interpretation.
Book Review: Easily as good as the crits
Summary: 5 Stars
Over the years I have read many books centred or reflecting upon holocaust atrocities and I had thought the power to shock would have dimmed. Maus took me by surprise with the depth of sickening revulsion I felt at the horrors which beset Spiegelman's family of Polish Jews. I attribute that to the medium, with the graphic portrayal of events leading to a much quicker and more immediate sense of the unimaginably awful conditions.
As with other such memoirs, there is, however, a strain of hope and plenty triumphs for the embattled human spirits encountered between the pages; and the author's depiction of his own Father (heroic in his resistance to the Nazi onslaught but very difficult to live with in later life) could hardly be termed sentimental. These elements combine to emphasise the realism and attractiveness of the account.
I regard this book as equivalent in status and importance to Anne Frank's Diary, hence a must-read.