Rating: 4 1/2 Read for: tl;dr challengeWell I doubt that any of you have not already heard of this book, which has been sitting on my shelf for almost two years! Lent to me by my aunt at Christmas, it was only the fabulous tl;dr challenge that spurred me to pick it up, and I read it in only a couple of hours.
The Complete Maus, i.e Maus I and Maus II, is the excellent biography of the Holocaust. Art Speigelman's father Vladek was a Polish Jew who struggled for many years to keep himself and his family out of the concentration camps. Forced to fight as a soldier and eventually imprisoned in Aushwitz, Vladek and his wife survived the Holocaust and moved to the US where they raised their son. As an adult, Art and his father do not have the best relationship, Vladek is a difficult man, but Art has the greatest respect for what his father endured during the Holocaust and wishes to record them in the best way he, as an artist, can.
The result is this groundbreaking graphic novel, where the Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats, the Poles as pigs and the Americans as dogs. Though this format may at first seem ridiculous, it actually allows the reader to get closer to a subject that is, for many, difficult to read. It is not a book one enjoys, though Speigelman's art is amusing in places. This book is both powerful and subtle, and quite eye-opening. Considering my high level of history education, I am actually ashamed to admit that I learnt from this book, but perhaps that is the way when exposed to history on a more personal level, instead of the clinical textbooks we read at school. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Maus enables Speigelman to get a difficult topic across in a more palatable sense, trying to detail his family's experience and perhaps to also explain how this made his father the man he was. Like Speigelman, I would dearly like to know more about his mother's experiences, and I hope this will spur me to read more personal tales of the Holocaust.
I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone, and perhaps more to people who might like to know more about the experiences of Polish Jews during World War II, but who might not normally pick up a book on it.
Other blog reviews:
1 More Chapter (Maus I)
1More Chapter (Maus II)
Bold.Blue.Adventure
In Spring it is the Dawn
Things Mean A Lot
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Have I missed yours?
4 comments:
"I am actually ashamed to admit that I learnt from this book, but perhaps that is the way when exposed to history on a more personal level, instead of the clinical textbooks we read at school."
I actually feel the same...I often learn more from historical novels than from history books. Novels bring events to life, and so they stick with us more.
Lovely review, Mariel. Here's mine.
I really "enjoyed" this book. Enjoyed in quotation marks, because its not a book you enjoy so much as can't put down. It was inventive, creative, and it made me think differently about the Holocaust.
this sounds like an intense book, great review.
http://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/
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