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Marzi - L'Intégrale - Tome 1 - La Pologne Vue Par Les Yeux D'une Enfant (2008)

by Marzena Sowa(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

2800142200 (ISBN13: 9782800142203)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Dupuis

review 1: I want to give this three stars for the cute art and the effort that has gone into this. But I couldn't finish it. Maybe if i was a more leisurely reader and was willing to pick it up at different times and progress through it's many chapters there is a slight chance I would enjoy it a whole lot more. However sitting down and plodding through it, it gets old quickly. I enjoyed a number of the story lines and if you don't know much about the history of Poland and satellite soviet states then you will likely learn a fair bit. I think from now on I will be avoiding memoir graphic novels as I have had issues with the ones I have read thus far.
review 2: I am not sure why people compare this book to Persepolis. They are two very different books, and even the premise... more is really not similar. Marzi is about a child, and even at the end she is barely starting to be a young teenager. Persepolis is about a young girl who grows up, lives as a teenager, and leaves and comes back after living abroad as a young adult to Iran. Perhaps it is the childhood spent under oppressive regime thing that got people to compare these two books, or that they are both memoirs, or that someone somewhere marketed Marzi as such. But no, they are very different. Marzena Sowa makes a conscious effort to see things and show things from the point of view of little Marzi, who plays pranks in the apartment building she lives in, makes gum from window sealant, hates being forced to eat by her mother, covets her rich friend's American toys, wants to have a telephone even though there is nobody to call... Marzi has some very universal kid experiences and worries. Sure she lives in Poland behind the iron curtain, and everything in her life is affected by this, but the book is about being a child, being an only child, making friends, and slowly growing up. If I were to compare this book with something, I would compare it with Mafalda. Though different in format (Mafalda is a short, usually 3+ panel newspaper comic strip), the lives of children, the way they see adult life are interestingly similar. Of course, Mafalda is a running commentary on politics, while Marzi is much more innocent and naive, like a "normal" kid.The illustrations are excellent and enhanced by the coloring scheme that uses strong pastels over grays. Some panels are too word-heavy and could have been split in two to thin out the words. The action in each panel not just depicted what the text was describing, but enhanced it by adding to it, or showing something that happened as a result of what was being described, which gives the pictorial story a dynamic feel.The stories are well balanced and diverse. Some deal with living under the Soviet rule, some about being kids and getting in trouble, some with visits to the country side, some with extended family, some with friends and school. Recommended for those who like memoirs and chewing gum. less

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