Book Club: 'American Widow' and national tragedy

In the last installment of our book club, we fawned over Curtis Sittenfeld's brilliant American Wife.  Because we are apparently only capable of reading books with very similar-sounding titles, this time we're reviewing American Widow, by Alissa Torres.

The second we heard about American Widow, we added to our Amazon wishlist.  A graphic memoir from a woman who, when she was seven months pregnant, lost her husband to 9/11--maybe we are sick, but um, yes please!  Maus, Fun Home, and Persepolis--graphic memoirs, all--morphed us into huge fans of the genre.  Graphic memoirs seemed to be the perfect medium for telling a certain kind of tragic story, when images or words alone can't quite capture it all.  So, yes, it's fair to say we had pretty high expectations for American Widow.

The book depicts author Alissa Torres's post-9/11 experiences of putting her husband to rest, having a baby, wading through the government red tape keeping her from aid for 9/11 families, and generally grieving her husband, a Colombian immigrant who worked in finance.  Torres also describes what it was like to embody the human face of a national tragedy--she lost her husband, who couldn't even get a greencard while he was alive, but died for his country.  All she wanted was to grieve in peace, but there she was, an American widow.  It's a sad and poignant story, but also one that's full of anger and regret.

Moving as it is, we are sad to report that the book was not quite as good as we had hoped it would be.  Even though we already know much of the story of 9/11, the book's narrative comes off as choppy and confusing.  We hardly get to know any of the characters or any of the details of what Torres went through.  What does she do for a living?  How has motherhood affected her?  It's the author's real story, so we understand that it won't follow a perfect Aristotelian tragedy arc, but we do wish that it would have developed more steadily.  By the end of the book, Torres tells us that she has grown and changed, but she still seems like the same grieving, bitter woman she's been all along.

The drawings are beautifully rendered by artist Sungyoon Choi.  But we can't help feel that the story loses something by not being drawn by the author herself.  And if she doesn't draw, then why, exactly, did she feel the need to write a graphic memoir?  The illustrations are wonderful, but we're not entirely convinced that this is a story that needed to be told visually.

The book is not perfect, but it's a quick and worthy read for anyone who's interested in graphic memoirs.  And hey, we might even let you borrow our copy.