Ephemera: A Memoir

by Briana Loewinsohn

Overview

A debut graphic novel that poignantly blends memoir, magic realism, and graphic medicine.

Ephemera is a poetic and dreamlike take on a graphic memoir set in a garden, a forest, and a greenhouse. The story drifts among a grown woman, her early memories as a child, and the gossamer existence of her mother. A lyrical entry in the field of graphic medicine, Ephemera is a story about a daughter trying to relate to a parent who struggles with mental illness. Gorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warmy, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood. Loewinsohn’s debut book is an aching, meditative twist on autobiography, infusing the genre with an ethereal fusion of memory and imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683966906
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	03/21/2023
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	1,073,529
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Briana Loewinsohn is an American cartoonist. These days she teaches high school art and draws comic books. She lives in Oakland, CA with her husband, daughter, and son. If she doesn’t text you back, she is probably gardening.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/13/2023

Loewinsohn debuts with a sparse but astounding graphic memoir of her coming of age amid her mother’s mental illness. With little text, Briana recalls a childhood spent in the countryside and how her mother would disappear periodically, though she is uncertain if this “happened once or a thousand times.” With only a sullen sibling for company and rebuffed in her efforts to connect with her parent, Briana explores the natural world. As an adult, she turns her care and attention back to the land, hoping to return life to it. As she tends to the earth, she remarks how she has to “wait forever sometimes,” much like she did as a child longing for her mom. Shuttling between past and present, the narrator captures in chilling shorthand the unmoored, uncertain experience of living with a neglectful caregiver. The art deploys earth tones and figures reminiscent of 1930s animation, and Loewinsohn slightly alters expected panel layouts, with picture book–like two-page spreads, and colors in a blue-tinged past against brown, fertile present scenes. It’s delicate, taciturn almost, in her impressive restraint and use of images to grapple with emotions. This powerful yet meditative work heralds the arrival of a promising creator. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Loewinsohn's memoir [is] a sophisticated and picturesque exploration of the weights that adults carry with them from their childhoods, imprints and encumbrances that accompany them wherever they go. It's a reminder, too, of how people can reshape these burdens, using art and inventiveness to realign the past in relation to the present."

NPR

"The art conveys the wistfulness and longing of a child dealing with a profound and baffling loss, and a woman who is still seeking a way to connect with the mother she lost too early."

Graphic Medicine

"Ephemera is a beautifully rendered melancholy memoir. A deep mix of fondness and sadness. A lovely work!"

Peter Bagge

"A gorgeously drawn meditation on those who matter most to us. Sublime."

Gene Luen Yang

"The ethereal art and poetic writing of Briana Loewinsohn's Ephemera feels like a dream that is both magical and heartbreaking."

Thien Pham (Level Up)

"Loewinsohn’s debut [features] rich, textured, and emotional artwork. [She] resists the category of graphic memoir by switching between timelines and using the art to mirror the looping nature of memory."

Booklist

"This imaginative autobiography uses the healing and growth of plants to explore childhood pains and memories."

The New York Times

"A gorgeously drawn meditation on those who matter most to us. Sublime."

Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese)

12/02/2023

This graceful meditation recounts the experience of losing a mother—first through absence, then through death—to mental illness. The title is ironic: the "ephemera" of plants and nature that Loewinsohn depicts critically shaped her childhood and now adulthood. The mother was a gardener: sections captioned "Dirt," "Water," and "Light," plus descriptions of nurturing greenery become metaphors for how their mother-child relationship was nurtured. Throughout, the adult Loewinsohn revisits herself as well as the child at different ages who all wait for this gossamer parent who has disappeared again. No other adults show their faces, and a young sibling, who is surely also suffering, offers no solace. The semirealistic characters drawn in line art all have eyes looking openly for something missing amid the muted beauty of nature. Sections featuring the real, adult Loewinsohn appear in warm rust-rose tones while her memories of childhood show in cool, wistful shades of teals and tans. VERDICT Mournful but somehow deeply soothing, Loewinsohn's graphic memories conjure a human's strength to perpetuate and reshape a bond, drawing creatively from only recollections and imaginings. This debut is a potent inspiration for readers yearning to reach toward important people of their own, now forever absent.

Library Journal