Joanna Rubin Dranger

You know those people who become obsessed with genealogy at a certain point in their lives and it becomes their whole thing? Well, Joanna Rubin Dranger dredges up her family history in this big, long, boring book.

Driven out of Poland by antisemitic pogroms at the start of the century her direct ancestors emigrate to Sweden and are able to wait out the Nazi threat during World War II thanks to Sweden's questionable "neutrality." Unfortunately, some of their extended family end up in Norway, show more where survival is trickier under German occupation, or remain in Poland where extermination policies kill all but a handful.

At one point, a close relative of the author questions why she cares about such distant relatives. At another point the author herself despairs that no one is going to be interested in this book:

"It won't be good enough; all the people and names and dates are in the way of making people relate. Nobody will be able to make themselves read it, I can hardly read it myself."

Ummm, yeah.

There are some interesting details scattered through the book, but they are often diluted by excruciating family trivia or the author's present day intrusions. Reading it was a chore.

My second biggest problem with the book is that it is pitched as a graphic memoir and placed in the graphic novel section of my library and makes the NPR list of favorite graphic novels of 2025 noted below, but it simply does not meet my personal definition of a graphic novel. Sequential storytelling is limited to a maybe a dozen pages out of the 400+ we are given. Mostly, this is a text history with a lot of spot illustrations -- many of which are just the author poorly reproducing photographs as drawings. (The book may have been more interesting with the original photographs, actually.) As it stands, if all the illustrations were removed, I estimate that more than 95% of the text could be retained with no editing changes, and the other five percent would need only minimal changes to make it readable without pictures. It's really a super-long picture book for adults, not a comic book at all.

My third problem is even more of a nitpick. I really dislike the way the author draws disproportionately small hands. Check out the self-portrait on the cover and note the little paws à la Kristen Wiig's Dooneese character on Saturday Night Live. Now place your own hand over your face and see how much it covers.

If you want to read about Jewish refugees traveling to Sweden, I recommend the much more concise We'll Soon Be Home Againby Jessica Bab Bonde, et al.

(Best of 2025 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:

� Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2025
� Publishers Weekly 2025 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
� NPR's Books We Love 2025: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made the NPR list.)

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: My Aunt Susanne & Lotte Laserstein -- It's Not Dangerous -- The Rag Dealer and the "Importation of Jews" -- L'Chaim - to Life -- Lova & David - Escaping from Nazi-Occupied Norway -- The Family That Disappeared -- Afterword -- The Family Tree -- Thanks -- Sources show less

This one is tough to review. I really liked the concept of the book, with the author trying to find & document information on family members who were victims of the Holocaust. I found the sections about her to be the most engaging. The parts dealing with the political situation during the Holocaust (like Sweden’s lack of action) was also interesting. Unfortunately, the stories of her family members, while important to tell and remember, just didn’t work for me. I was lost on their names show more and didn’t feel invested in them.
I won a free copy of this book (thanks to the author & publisher!) and am voluntarily providing an honest review. show less

I wrapped up my mini bonus bonanza with this very quick read. Dranger does feminist satire, dealing with stuff like self-hate, neurosis, sexism and male double standards. There’s much to like and agree with here, but the execution is not my cup of tea. Dranger’s metaphors and fairy tale pastiches are too crude to work for me, as is the overloaded symbolism of the art. It all becomes a little too obvious. I feel several artists in the generation after Dranger, like Strömqvist, Johansson show more or Hansson, are doing this better. show less

Ännu en underbar Dranger-bok. Humor och hopplöshet i hundaförti.