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leslie_overbookedsocialworker's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Cancer, Grief, and Homophobia
bedroominarles's review
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent and Cancer
dananana's review
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Cancer, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Medical content
kllyholt's review
challenging
dark
emotional
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
choked up a little when the mother said “i love you more when you fail, because that’s when you need more love.” really beautifully done, emotional story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer and Death of parent
safecamp's review
emotional
sad
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Cancer, and Death of parent
lettuce_read's review against another edition
emotional
sad
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent and Cancer
ilana_banana's review
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Terminal illness, and Death of parent
enbybooklove's review
emotional
sad
fast-paced
4.0
NetGalley ARC
This was a tough one for me. I had to keep stopping to absorb the anticipatory pain. From the description of the book, I knew already that the mother dies, and everything in the memoir relates one way or another to her death. Through fragmented memories, "mumin" is painted as the best kind of mom - understanding, caring, fun, creative, and only very occasionally strict (like, about sunscreen).
Woven throughout the memoir are episodes from the author's gender story. I was particularly interested in this aspect of the book, and I like the message that comes through here. It seemed to me that the author pretty much figured out their comfort point with gender and their parents were pretty much very accepting of it, except that they quickly medicalized and dove into specifics of surgery that their child wasn't actually exploring. I read this as "even the best allies can make wrong assumptions, and the story should always be driven by the person themselves".
I must admit that I was hoping for more crosswords and fewer animals, just given the cover. I was delighted to find at least one crossword, made up of gender expansive terms. The creatures along with a multitude of nicknames and memories fragmented in time occasionally tripped me up so I didn't always understand the reason why a particular scene was included. Once you figure out that the birds are never family members, the panels in boxes are from the past, and mom's hair is another time clue, it gets a lot easier to follow the author's logic.
All in all I'm glad I read this book even though the non-human illustrations were a little out of my comfort zone. It was nice to have a Maia Kobabe quote on the cover (their memoir is one of my favorites!) reminding me that the book is "deeply human".
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer
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