Will Eisner: A Comics Biography

 Will Eisner: A Comics Biography by Stephen Weiner and Dan Mazur (2025) 300 pages 

Having read some of his autobiographical graphic novels (or autobiographical notes included in books that are not autobiographical works) I knew about his WWII service and his daughter dying leading to his crisis of faith. Otherwise, I wish there was more here. Eisner's youth and early career were full of interesting stories. I ate that part of the biographical comic up! Chapter 4, going into his business partnership with Iger, also kept the behind-the-scenes nuggets very interesting. Beginning with Eisner creating The Spirit, a private detective hero without a circus costume, the details become more slim. Through his later life, having a wife and kids and inventing the term "graphic novel," I wanted to know more, much more! The art style does a great job of giving multiple homages to Eisner.

Thistlefoot

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, 435 pages

So I first read this book in 2022, and loved it and blogged about it then, particulary noting that I could see using this Baba Yaga story of generational trauma and magical powers for Orcs & Aliens. And whaddaya know, that's just what we did this month! It was a great book discussion, and one of the more even-keeled Baba Yaga tales around.

(Also, I would LOVE to see this author live, as she apparently brings puppets, which is a vital part of the story, to all of her author visits.)

Unterzakhn

Unterzakhn by Leela Corman (2012) 208 pages

Earlier this year I saw Book Riot's list "22 of the Best Graphic Novels of All Time." I added all the ones I didn't already have on my reading list to my "Want To Read" list. This historical fiction graphic novel sounded particularly interesting. It is about two sisters growing up on New York's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. The title is Yiddish for "Underthings." We start in 1909 when Esther and Fanya are six. We progress to 1912, then there is a flashback to 1895 to learn how their father came to America. The story of the sisters continues in 1917 through 1923. Fanya finds education and work with an obstetrician, Bronia, who provides illegal, but desperately needed abortions for the poor immigrant population. Esther finds a different type of education and work with Miss Lucille, a madam of a brothel/burlesque house. The parents of Fanya and Esther, from the old world, have perhaps less influence on their lives than these two women. The book deals with many adult themes. The later portion of the story sees Esther taking a slightly larger role as she becomes a jazz age Broadway star. The ending is tragic and ironic, so the author leaves us with a short flashback to a funny, carefree episode when the girls were young.

Thistlefoot

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, 435 pages

Woodworker Bellatine and her nomadic brother Isaac are minding their own business when they get word that they have inherited something from their long-gone ancestor: her house. But their ancestor was Baba Yaga, and her house, well, it has chicken legs and runs around. Despite their trepidation about the semi-sentient house, they take it on the road, traveling from town to town, presenting a puppet show that their parents used to do. However,  neither Bellatine nor Isaac can shake off their own demons, and there's a creepy...man?...stalking them across the country.

This was a wonderful and weird story about history, the power of stories, generational trauma, self-doubt, and so much more. I absolutely loved it, and I can definitely see reading this in Orcs & Aliens some day (I don't think we've done a Baba Yaga story yet...?).

The Mathematician's Shiva

The Mathematician's Shiva: a novel by Stuart Rojstaczer  366 pp.

Rachela Karnokovitch, survived a rough childhood in Poland and the Soviet Union during World War II. In spite of her beginnings she became a brilliant and world renowned mathematician and professor at the University of Wisconsin. She dies peacefully with her family surrounding her. Her son, Sasha, her husband, and other family members plan a quiet funeral and shiva only to have their plans disrupted by the arrival of masses of mathematician's who revered and/or hated her. All believe she has taken the solution to the million dollar Navier-Stokes Prize problem to her grave. Her son has found no evidence of it. However, there is her memoir about her life during the war, written in Polish that Sasha painstakingly translates. Besides the collection of socially inept mathematician's, the arrival of Sasha's daughter and granddaughter, neither of whom he has met before, adds another wrinkle to the proceeds. There is subtle humor, reluctant romance, and heartwarming moments. The book is well written and so believable that at one point I had to check to make sure this was a fictional story and not a son's true memoir of his mother.

The impossible exile

The impossible exile: Stefan Zweig at the end of the world / George Prochnik, 390 pgs.

One of Europe's best know authors fled with the rise of Hitler but never managed to find a place where he felt at home.  The author handles his subject with care and does a good job of making the reader understand the idea of exile.  Yes, there were many others with worse situations,  Zweig had the means to move many times, to Paris, England, New York, Ossining, NY, and Brazil but that didn't mean he could find what he left in Vienna.  Interestingly, this is an author that was so popular in his time that we know almost nothing about.  I freely admit I had never heard his name.  Now I will have to read some of his works.  How does fame work like that?  Possibly that is the part of the story that is the lease interesting.  Zweig as a character with loves and friends and feelings is the most interesting.  His life was beautiful and it was tragic.

Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman, 321 pages

Maya and Alex immigrated to the U.S. when they were children, met as young adults and quickly married. After a few years, they realized they couldn't have children and, despite her husband's reservations, Maya and Alex adopt a baby from a young couple from Montana, vowing to never tell the child of his biological parents. Fast-forward eight years, and when the young Max begins acting oddly (eating grass, wandering among deer in their New Jersey backyard, running away to look at rocks in a stream), Maya determines that they need to track down his biological parents in order to understand their son.

It's an odd story of family, of adopted cultures, of not fitting in. I'm honestly not sure what I thought of this book, though I know I'll be ruminating on it for quite some time. Which I guess is a good thing.

The Japanese Lover

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende  336 pp.

Isabel Allende is probably my all-time favorite author. Once again she has crafted a novel that is captivating, touching, and entertaining. Essentially it's a story of people living dual lives. Irina, who escapes an impoverished life in Moldova only to land it a more horrible life in the U.S. before becoming a personal assistant to elderly Alma Belasco. Young Alma is sent to the home of her uncle and aunt before the occupation Poland. She lives a life of wealth and privilege while holding on to a love forbidden by society of the time. Ichimei is the son of the Belasco's gardener whose friendship/love for Alma is sustained throughout his life. In the end more secrets about the lives of these people are revealed. This one is a winner.

The Boston Girl

The Boston Girl: a novel by Anita Diamant  322 pp.

Eighty-five year old Addie Baum answers the question put to her by her granddaughter: "How did you get to be the woman you are today." With a lot of humor and honesty she relates her life from about age 15 through her marriage. As the daughter of Jewish immigrants growing up in the tenements of Boston in the early 20th century she lived a hard life with until her eyes were opened to the world around her by joining a club for young women. Soon she learns to stand up for herself against her unhappy, domineering mother, survives man trouble, World War I, and the flu epidemic, to become a true "Boston Girl", working and supporting herself with the help and encouragement of other strong, modern women. It's a touching picture of a time when the roles of women began to change drastically and Addie revels in it.  I listened to the audiobook read by actress Linda Lavin (tv's "Alice") and she gives Addie the perfect voice. This book is as enjoyable as The Red Tent but in an entirely different way.

The Golem and the Djinni

The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker  512 pp.

In 1899 a lonely Polish man enlists the help of a disgraced rabbi to make him a golem, a creature made of clay, to serve as his wife. On the journey to New York, the man dies on board the ship leaving the golem, Chava, to fend for herself in a new world. Only an old rabbi recognizes what she is and takes her in to teach her how to get along in the world. She lives in a boarding house on the Lower East Side and takes a job in a bakery. Meanwhile a Syrian jinni arrives in New York sealed in an olive oil flask. He is released but wears an iron cuff which means he is not truly free. Ahmad, the jinni, makes his home in Little Syria helping the tinsmith who accidentally freed him from the flask. A chance meeting between Chava and Ahmad leads to an unlikely friendship. Enter the villain who wants to control both magical creatures for his own nefarious purposes and the story takes a new turn. While this is a fantasy, strong historical fiction elements describe the immigrant experience of two divergent cultures making new homes in America. Different and enjoyable.

A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York / Liana Finck

A charming new graphic novel.  The narrator receives an old notebook full of newspaper clippings, from which emerges the ghost of Abraham Cahan, famous founder of the Yiddish paper the Forward.  (I wrote about an interesting Cahan bio recently.)  Together the narrator and Cahan look at letters from Cahan's 100-year-old advice column, The Bintel Brief.  Finck brings the stories to life with quietly effective drawing, and shares Cahan's response to each letter.  Alongside the letter stories, which evoke Lower East Side life at the turn of the last century, Cahan and the narrator carry on their own dialogue, and before he departs Cahan has advice for our author as well.  Moving but not sentimental, this would make a great gift.  Recommended. 

The Rise of Abraham Cahan / Seth Lipsky 224 p.

Abraham Cahan founded the Yiddish-language newspaper Jewish Daily Forward in 1897, having come to New York from Vilna (Vilnius), then part of Imperial Russia.  The Forward in its heyday had a national circulation of 275,000, making it one of the most influential papers of its time.  (It is still published today, weekly in English and bi-weekly in Yiddish; in fact, you can look at this week's copy right on the newspaper shelves at our own UCPL. )  Cahan and the paper he founded were vigorous advocates of trade unionism and social democracy.  In his career he interviewed Lenin and Dreyfus; Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote for the paper.

I liked the man who emerged from this relatively brief portrait by Lipsky.  But in many ways this book is more a portrait of Cahan's time and place - Yiddish-speaking, lower east side New York in the first half of the 20th century - and the importance of journalism to this era, than of the man Abraham Cahan.  There's nothing wrong with this emphasis.  But when I'm reading a biography, or a quasi biography, I enjoy having a stronger sense of the person than I got here.