Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir

December 12, 2022 2:00 PM

When Tom Hart and Leela Corman's young daughter Rosalie dies suddenly, Hart writes a graphic memoir to articulate his and his wife's on-going search for meaning in the aftermath of her death.

"Rosalie Lightning is honest, searching, burning, and beautiful. Every parent will find a piece of themselves in this unforgettable graphic memoir." --Scott McCloud, author of The Sculptor and Understanding Comics

"A bracing, deeply saddening journey into death and loss whose wryly affirmative resolution, 'joy breaking through the storm clouds,' is nothing but hard won." -- Kirkus

"Rosalie Lightning is a masterpiece—and a luminous tribute to a brief, beautiful life." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

posted by johnofjack (2 comments total)

This book absolutely wrecked me when I read it. It's so good, but I don't think I'll read it again any time soon.

It also reminded me of an article I read once, written by a police officer who had been sexually assaulted, who talked both about how she got it--she understood the need for the repeated questions--and about how just being questioned by the police, even as a police officer, was an additional layer of trauma no one should have to deal with.
posted by johnofjack at 2:05 PM on December 12, 2022

My friend left this book behind on her porch when she moved. I didn't understand why she left it out there. It's a beautiful book. Years went by and I never picked it up. Finally I read it on the way out the door to give it to a thrift store along with some other stuff. "I should at least read it before I just give it away," I thought. So I did. I read the whole thing and then dropped it on the floor and didn't go to the thrift store. I didn't go anywhere. This was about six months or so ago. At least six months, maybe a year. In that time, my father died. The book has remained where it dropped the whole time. Eventually I took the other things to the thrift store but not the book. Sunday another friend saw it there on the floor by the door and recognized it and wanted to read it, and I said, "Take it, take it." She took it.

I used to know somebody who, when he was reading Last Exit to Brooklyn, was so profoundly horrified that he put the book in the freezer between bouts of reading, to, like, contain it. This book you can't even move it to the freezer. You have to move away, or somebody else has to come and take it for you. And then you will feel bad because it's not there anymore. I wish it were still there on the floor by the door.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:55 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]