Good morning my loves
Today is a particularly exciting post. If you’ve read any of my recent posts (#IndieBooksLoveFest and #IndieBooksLoveFest August Spotlight) you’ll know that my plan at the moment is to showcase independent publishers for the next couple of months. Today I have my review of Mansfield & Me by Sarah Laing.
Part memoir, part biography, Laing charts her life and journey to being a writer against Katherine Mansfield’s own journey. An examination of how our lives connect to those of our personal heroes.
My Thoughts.
Okay, so when I was browsing the Eye/Lightning website looking for the books that I wanted to feature, this one immediately caught my eye. I’m a big fan of graphic novels but I’ve read so few graphic memoirs, so I was excited to try this one. I’ve read a couple of things by Katherine Mansfield before and was interested to know more about her and so this was the perfect chance.
I found the two elements of the books equally fascinating; Katherine Mansfield clearly had a far more interesting life than I could have imagined, and a terribly sad death, but I also found myself completely drawn to Sarah and the story of her life growing up, as Mansfield did, in New Zealand, and her own literary journey to publication alongside Katherine’s.
Having recently read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, I was intrigued to see how Laing approached the graphic memoir. The illustrations in this one were absolutely gorgeous, it’s probably some of my most favourite in any graphic novel I’ve ever read. So not only is the writing captivating, but the imagery to go along with it is stunning.
I really hope Sarah Laing writes more of these graphic memoirs or biographies of other talented women – I’d read them all!
Have you read Mansfield & Me? If not I highly recommend it!
Peace and pages
Amy
X