Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 70
 Everything I expected and more. May 21, 2010
A. Jeffreson
This book is exactly as advertised, it is one of the single most powerful, personal, and moving accounts of the suffering of the Jews during Hitler's final solution.
A powerful story and visual metaphor May 14, 2010
Sofia Romualdo (Porto, Portugal)
Personal tales of survival from the Nazi concentration camps have appeared everywhere in literature. Historians have been able to piece together the reality of the war, of Auschwitz, Dachau and the other camps, of the horrors that went on, of the suffering that people went through. And still, for me, they continue to be incredible.
These stories interest me because I can't bring myself to understand why things happened the way they did, and how it is possible for human beings to convince themselves that they need to exterminate other human beings as if they were vermin. This is the first striking thing about this book - the powerful visual metaphor the author uses with humans being depicted as animals. The Jews are represented by mice, which works really well to show just exactly how the others viewed them - as lesser, disgusting beings that should be eradicated. As a natural consequence, Germans are portrayed as cats (though I have to say I wasn't too happy about that, since I'm a cat person). Non-Jewish Poles are portrayed as pigs, Americans as dogs. It adds a whole different dimension to the story, since we see them as they saw each other - different categories of species.
And yet, this is more than a memoir in the form of graphic novel. It also explores the dynamic between father and child, the ambivalence of the author towards his parents, whom he both loves and resents, and the way he comes to terms with the history of his family, including feeling guilty for having had everything too easily compared to them, and feeling that his own life story could never come close to that of his parents. It also explains how difficult it was for Mr. Spiegelman to grasp the true meaning of what their parents went through, and his efforts to tell the story we are reading.
The artwork is simple but poignant, and the animal metaphor quickly disappears into the story, which makes it even more piercing when we see real photographs of the people depicted throughout the book. The photograph of the author's father wearing the prisoner's garments is especially touching.
For me, this was different from other Holocaust memoirs I've read, not only because it's in graphic novel form, but also because it's told in the point of view of someone who isn't a survivor, but a descendant, and so can explore the effect that the Holocaust had on those few who survived it. Surviving it wasn't enough. These events affected profoundly whole countries and whole generations of people.
A must-read classic, and deservedly so.
An excellent, thoughtful work on the holocaust May 2, 2010
R. Palmer
This is an unquestionably brilliant book. It thoroughly deserves every bit of praise heaped on it (and its Pulitzer!)
The book traces the authors attempts to write about his parents experiences in concentration camps during the second world war. It also explores his relationship with them and how they lived once the war had finished. Many of the other books I have read on the holocaust focus upon peoples experience during WWII. This I liked for the extra perspective that it gives on the devastating effect that the holocaust had on peoples lives. The way that Spiegelman deals with his mothers suicide is particularly poignant for me. They survive the camps and make a new life for themselves in the US - they were in many ways successful. Yet his mother, having survived the horror and brutality of the concentration camps later takes her life.
A towering achievement, everyone should read it.
To get other perspectives on the holocaust, I also recommend Life with a Star (Flamingo), Mendelssohn is on the Roof (Jewish lives) (I particularly like this one) and of course, If This Is a Man / The Truce.
A must buy March 29, 2010
fish and chips
The very idea of a holocaust can often a very far away thought from our ordinary lives. I've never once found a book that has actually made you felt the true horror of genocide then Spiegelman's Maus. Its an honest and touching account into the persecution of those who were simply considered "different." The story covers almost every single aspect of how WW2 tore the entire country and world apart. Following the life of Polish Jew Vladek Spiegleman, the author's father, from pre-war Poland to the Death camps of Austwiz the entire story is gripping and beautifully drawn. The Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis as cats, most of all its easy to read, easy to understand and most importantly it leaves the clearest message of all. That what has been done must never be forgotten.
A touching, awful and absolutely incredible masterpiece February 24, 2010
Siko (Shropshire, England)
I don't read comic books but I was attracted to this by the reviews and the unique approach to the subject matter.
It is an awful, horrible book that fully brings home the impact of the Holocaust through the use of the Cats as the Germans and the Mice as the Jews....whilst that may sound disrespectful and distasteful for the gravity of the subject, somehow, it utterly works.
The comic style adds a childlike stance to the story, (whilst it is not a childs story) and it somehow clearly exposes the cruelty espoused by the Germans for what it was - an utterly unfair and almost childish fascination with blaming the Jews for their own failings. This impacted me like almost no other book before and since...perhaps it is the fact it is presented like a comic that grips you easily and then hammers home like a sucker punch to the gut with the awful subject matter.
An all-time masterpiece, in every sense. Disturbing but absolutely captivating, read it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 70
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