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Let Me Be Frank
Let Me Be Frank
Let Me Be Frank brings Sarah Laing’s popular autobiographical comic series together for the first time. Sarah Laing began blogging her comics in 2009 as a way to shed light on her fiction writing and to record life before it evaporated. The comics soon had a large audience, eager for the next installment about Sarah’s parenting fails and successes, writing, her obsession with Katherine Mansfield, her family’s history, pet mice, sex, clothes, and more.
348 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 30, 2020
(3.5) Laing is a novelist and comics artist from New Zealand best known for her previous graphic memoir, Mansfield and Me, about her obsession with one of the best-known NZ writers, Katherine Mansfield. This collection brings together the autobiographical comics that originally appeared on Laing’s blog of the same title in 2010-19 and then in zine issues. She started posting these comics when she was writer-in-residence at the Frank Sargeson Centre in Auckland. (I know the name Sargeson because he helped Janet Frame when she was early in her career.)
So what is the book about? All of life, really: growing up with type 1 diabetes, having boyfriends, being part of a family, the constant niggle of body issues, struggling as a writer, and trying to be a good mother. Other specific topics include her teenage obsession with music (especially Morrissey) and her run-ins with various animals (a surprising number of dead possums!). She ruminates about the times when she hasn’t done enough to help people who were in trouble. She also admits her confusion about fashion: she is always looking for, but never finding, ‘her look’. And is she modeling the right kind of female identity for her children? “I feel like I’m betraying feminism, buying my daughter a fairy princess dress,” she frets. But even as she expresses these worries, she wonders how genuine she can be since they form the basis of her art. Is she just “publically performing my neuroses”? The work/life divide is especially tricksy when your life inspires your work.
I took half a month to read these comics on screen, usually just a few pages a day. It’s a tough book to judge as a whole because there is such a difference between the full-color segments and the sketch-like black-and-white ones. There is also a ‘warts-and-all’ approach here, with typos and cross-outs kept in. (Two that made me laugh were aesophegus [for oesophagus] and Diana Anthill!) Overall, though, I think this is a relatable and fun book that would suit fans of Alison Bechdel and Roz Chast but should also draw in readers new to the graphic novel format.
My thanks to independent UK publisher Eye Books for sending me the e-book to review.
So what is the book about? All of life, really: growing up with type 1 diabetes, having boyfriends, being part of a family, the constant niggle of body issues, struggling as a writer, and trying to be a good mother. Other specific topics include her teenage obsession with music (especially Morrissey) and her run-ins with various animals (a surprising number of dead possums!). She ruminates about the times when she hasn’t done enough to help people who were in trouble. She also admits her confusion about fashion: she is always looking for, but never finding, ‘her look’. And is she modeling the right kind of female identity for her children? “I feel like I’m betraying feminism, buying my daughter a fairy princess dress,” she frets. But even as she expresses these worries, she wonders how genuine she can be since they form the basis of her art. Is she just “publically performing my neuroses”? The work/life divide is especially tricksy when your life inspires your work.
I took half a month to read these comics on screen, usually just a few pages a day. It’s a tough book to judge as a whole because there is such a difference between the full-color segments and the sketch-like black-and-white ones. There is also a ‘warts-and-all’ approach here, with typos and cross-outs kept in. (Two that made me laugh were aesophegus [for oesophagus] and Diana Anthill!) Overall, though, I think this is a relatable and fun book that would suit fans of Alison Bechdel and Roz Chast but should also draw in readers new to the graphic novel format.
My thanks to independent UK publisher Eye Books for sending me the e-book to review.
January 14, 2022
To be honest, I'd much rather be a comic book artist than an ex-poet. Is it too late to start learning how to draw?
October 20, 2019
At first glance this is a breezy, humorous collection of autobiographical anecdotes, and the sketchy, skillful but unfussy drawing works well to give the impression of a just-before-bed diary entry. But many of the stories develop and resolve in a satisfying way, ending with a well chosen, thoughtful series of panels, or a deft comic beat in a way which suggests either structure aforethought or, more intimidatingly maybe, a sharp instinct for improvisation along with the guts to trust and let lie.
The life Laing depicts here is one of everyday struggles and anxieties - she's not casting out demons or attempting some sort of "look how many grotesque incidents of self-loathing I can jump" -style daredevilry - and the effect is of greater honesty than other (comic) autobiographies of those more confessional types. She builds an easy rapport with the reader who begins to feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have a real sense of who she is. The cumulative effect of these stories is to remind us of the meaning to be found in dealing with life day to day, and the small events that resonate. These after all are the moments that make up most of our lives, rather than the outsize and tragic events which produce atypical and outsize behaviour.
There may well be bodies under the patio but if Laing chooses not to depict them it's because she perhaps really is the person she comes across as - an essentially well-adjusted person dealing with relatable and understandable problems and fears, and with the sorts of anxieties about her actions that only someone with a reasonably accurate ethical compass would have. Like most of us hopefully.
The life Laing depicts here is one of everyday struggles and anxieties - she's not casting out demons or attempting some sort of "look how many grotesque incidents of self-loathing I can jump" -style daredevilry - and the effect is of greater honesty than other (comic) autobiographies of those more confessional types. She builds an easy rapport with the reader who begins to feel, rightly or wrongly, that they have a real sense of who she is. The cumulative effect of these stories is to remind us of the meaning to be found in dealing with life day to day, and the small events that resonate. These after all are the moments that make up most of our lives, rather than the outsize and tragic events which produce atypical and outsize behaviour.
There may well be bodies under the patio but if Laing chooses not to depict them it's because she perhaps really is the person she comes across as - an essentially well-adjusted person dealing with relatable and understandable problems and fears, and with the sorts of anxieties about her actions that only someone with a reasonably accurate ethical compass would have. Like most of us hopefully.
April 4, 2020
“Everything I do, even when it is right, is actually wrong.”
In artistic terms I think that Laing’s strongest talent lies in her use of colour. She can write some really good stories, but the quality of the lettering can be hard work to decipher and although I don’t think her art work is anything to write home about the sheer power and quality of the stories still shines through.
“He was quite campy, & I was seduced by his queer eye for the frumpy mum manner.”
There were some cracking little stories in here and times when I loved this. We get a whole load of goodies, not just from the shopping trips, yoga sessions and café visits, but a whole spectrum of moods and situations are depicted, from darker subjects like her cancer stricken neighbour or her dementia riddled grandfather to the more upbeat ones, such as the not quite meeting Morrissey on the plane story, which had me laughing aloud, as did “The Tomato Problem”. Both of the possum stories were great and the St Patrick day encounter was delightfully random.
Laing comes across really well and her eye for a good story often makes up for the inconsistent drawing and as she says in here you don’t have to be a good drawer to be a good cartoonist.
December 25, 2019
Lots of thoughts on the writing process and self analysis, parenting, clothes and bodies, family, people watching and more. Varied visually with some pages in full colour, part colour, others on coloured paper as well as at least 50% in b & w. Sometimes a little too introspective, reflecting the writing process, so it's best read in bursts, but ultimately entertaining and enlightening.
November 10, 2022
A few years ago, I read and very much enjoyed another of Sarah Laing's graphic novels (one about Katherine Mansfield). When I saw this one at the library, it was an easy decision to borrow it. The book is a méli-mélo of comics from Laing's blog (which I never read!), covering topics from parenting to teenage phases to writing. I liked this graphic novel as well - not as much as Mansfield and Me - but it kept me interested and I would be happy to read more Sarah Laing.
August 26, 2020
I had subscribed to the blog that became this book but I wasn't very good at keeping up with it so am very pleased it has been collated into a book. Relatable little snippets of life that are beautifully told in cartoons. I devoured it. More please!
May 4, 2022
I love Sarah's comic work. And her writing.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews