Ephemera A memoir

Loewinsohn's debut resists the category of graphic memoir by switching between time lines and using the art to mirror the looping nature of memory. Important locations from her childhood--like the woods she used to wander, and the garden around her old house--serve as bridges between the past and the present. As an adult, Briana is roaming the woods and working in the garden of childhood home. In the past, we see a little girl who is alone most of the time because her mother is in the throes of a mental-health crisis. She and her brother linger in the house and wander the woods whenever their mother is gone and wait for her to come back. Flowers and plants consistently dominate the pages, wrapping around Briana to provide the comfort that her mother is unable to. Her mother taught her about tending to the garden, so it's how Briana connects to her past, and that's nicely carried out in the rich, textured, and emotional artwork. Hand this to fans of Marjane Satrapi.

Loewinsohn debuts with a sparse but astounding graphic memoir of her coming of age amid her mother's mental illness. With little text, Briana recalls a childhood spent in the countryside and how her mother would disappear periodically, though she is uncertain if this "happened once or a thousand times." With only a sullen sibling for company and rebuffed in her efforts to connect with her parent, Briana explores the natural world. As an adult, she turns her care and attention back to the land, hoping to return life to it. As she tends to the earth, she remarks how she has to "wait forever sometimes," much like she did as a child longing for her mom. Shuttling between past and present, the narrator captures in chilling shorthand the unmoored, uncertain experience of living with a neglectful caregiver. The art deploys earth tones and figures reminiscent of 1930s animation, and Loewinsohn slightly alters expected panel layouts, with picture book--like two-page spreads, and colors in a blue-tinged past against brown, fertile present scenes. It's delicate, taciturn almost, in her impressive restraint and use of images to grapple with emotions. This powerful yet meditative work heralds the arrival of a promising creator. (Mar.)