April 20, 2012
What do you do when your outspoken, passionate and quick-witted mother starts fading into a forgetful, fearful woman? In this powerful graphic memoir, Sarah Leavitt reveals how Alzheimer’s disease transformed her mother Midge — and her family — forever.
In spare black and white drawings and clear, candid prose, Sarah shares her family’s journey through a harrowing range of emotions — shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration — all the while learning to cope, and managing to find moments of happiness. Midge, a Harvard-educated intellectual, struggles to comprehend the simplest words; Sarah’s father Rob slowly adapts to his new role as full-time caretaker, but still finds time for word-play and poetry with his wife; Sarah and her sister Hannah argue, laugh, and grieve together as they join forces to help Midge get to sleep, rage about family friends who have disappeared, or collapse in tears at the end of a heartbreaking day.
The Leavitts — a secular Jewish American family transplanted to small-town Canada — all have different relationships to Judaism, Jewish culture, God and faith. These relationships form a strong undercurrent in Tangles, as Sarah, struggling to cope with her mother’s illness, questions God, attends synagogue for the first time and, finally, finds comfort in the Kaddish.
In spare black and white drawings and clear, candid prose, Sarah shares her family’s journey through a harrowing range of emotions — shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration — all the while learning to cope, and managing to find moments of happiness. Midge, a Harvard-educated intellectual, struggles to comprehend the simplest words; Sarah’s father Rob slowly adapts to his new role as full-time caretaker, but still finds time for word-play and poetry with his wife; Sarah and her sister Hannah argue, laugh, and grieve together as they join forces to help Midge get to sleep, rage about family friends who have disappeared, or collapse in tears at the end of a heartbreaking day.
The Leavitts — a secular Jewish American family transplanted to small-town Canada — all have different relationships to Judaism, Jewish culture, God and faith. These relationships form a strong undercurrent in Tangles, as Sarah, struggling to cope with her mother’s illness, questions God, attends synagogue for the first time and, finally, finds comfort in the Kaddish.
