The Last Time We Spoke
By Jesse Mechanic
Street Noise Books, 2025. 146 pages. Graphic Novels
When he was a teenager, Jesse Mechanic's mother passed away after a long struggle with cancer. In this memoir, he looks back on that time, and on the ways that experience followed him throughout his life. Struggling with school while dealing with attentional problems and the overwhelming tsunami of grief, this book tells the story of Mechanics slow work to figure out a life for himself. It's about obsessive-compulsive disorder, intrusive thoughts, and depression. It's about what loss can teach us, and how trauma can be both debilitating and beautiful. It's about standing in dark rooms for long enough for your eyes to adjust.
This is an emotionally vulnerable look into a life colored by loss. With beautiful illustrations and tender ruminations, this is recommended to all those who have experienced the death of a loved one, young or old.
If you liked The Last Time We Spoke, you might also like:
By Sarah Leavitt
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024. 141 pages. Graphic Novels
In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss.
Tyler Feder shares her story of her mother's first oncology appointment to facing reality as a motherless daughter in this frank and refreshingly funny graphic memoir.
RBL
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