Sarah Leavitt, Tangles
Sarah Leavitt’s poignant graphic memoir is as knotted and complicated as its evocative title would suggest. First published in 2012, Tangles tells the story of Sarah’s mother’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, and the effects of its progression on her mental and physical health.
At the heart of the book is Sarah’s mother Midge, an exuberant teacher and animal-lover whose mind, as Sarah’s partner observes, is slowly clouded by the effects of the disease, “like the garden this summer...tangled, but with spots of brightness.”
The title also evokes the curly hair that Sarah and her mother share and that Sarah saves as her mother’s condition worsens, as well as the fraught, increasingly difficult texture of Midge’s days. In spare but powerful line drawings, Leavitt captures the daily happenings at her parents’ house, where her father lovingly cares for her mother and where Sarah, her partner Donimo, and other family members take turns with caregiving responsibilities. For Midge, there is frustration, worry, and bewilderment. “I’ve lost all my sweetness,” she tells Sarah, at one point. And yet, there are moments of joy too, as Midge revels in a late-night tableau of fallen snow and runs through a summer thunderstorm to taste the rain.