Nicole Hollander (1939–2026)

More Sylvia! I'm getting my Sylvia fix right now. Witty observation on the way life was back in 1981 and the way life still is at times. Love it when her daughter pounds on the bathroom door - "Ma! Are you almost done??" Naturally, she's not. She's got her typewriter in the tub and she's busy with her dreams of Superwomen and fortune tellers.

Read the obituary for Nicole Hollander and pulled this book from my shelves to revisit her liberal feminist humor that made some newspaper readers hopping mad back in the day.

I still think she is right on the mark. It was nice having yoy here, Nicole.

This memoir is the first thing I’ve read by the cartoonist Nicole Hollander in years. Like Alison Bechdel she chronicles her upbringing in cartoons but using much more narrative. It’s not nearly as good or profound as Fun Home, but well worth the read.

It seemed, at first glance, that I fit squarely into the target audience for this book. I like cats, I like comic strips, and I like humor. And it's not like my tastes are all that high-class: I still often find LOLcats funny. But this book, alas, is not particularly funny. I suppose I should have been somewhat cautious when I realized it was by the cartoonist behind Sylvia, which is often just a half-step away from actual humor. And thus it is with this book. Parts of it - such as the woman show more raised by cats or the mind games cats play - are almost funny, which is in some ways more disappointing than something that is all-out unfunny. And I think the worst part was that I could spot jokes I know other people would find funny. I could imagine certain friends of mine laughing at various lines, particularly if read out loud. So maybe I wasn't the target audience after all. show less