Stitches

“Graphic Novels. They Aren't Books. They have no literary value.”

Sigh.

I have often heard this. Repeatedly. Books like Stitches are the reason that the argument against graphic novels not being literature heavyweights is so brainless. This story is poignant, as well as painful and oh so very real.

David Small is a famous children's illustrator who took his childhood memories held them, squeezed them, and wrapped them up into a ball and served us this novel. His childhood was not a happy one; “Dad was never there except occasionally for one of mother's dry, burned little meals; mother coiled tight inside her shell of angry, resentful silence; my brother in his, and I in mine.” This is a story full of angry moments. At the beginning usually from his mother, later into David's adolescence, the anger belonged to him. It was full of lying and cruelty on the part of his parents. Often when reading this, I had to put the book down and take a moment to appreciate my own family, my own parents, and myself as a parent. I am doing better than I think I am.

Most of the story centers on a lie David's parents told him regarding his health and the casualty cruelties accompanying it. What was supposed to be an easy cyst removal in his neck was actually cancer and left David disfigured and mostly mute. His parents never acknowledge what had happened to him until much later. This leaves him with both physical scars, “A crusted black track of stitches; my smooth young throat slashed and laced back up like a bloody boot,” and understandably the mental scars that would come with that.

I am sure at this point you are wondering why someone would read something like this. It sounds like a long story of pain, and it is. However, David's story is also one of hope and overcoming your past. It is beautiful and tragic and heartbreaking. But this is a story that will dig into your mind and stay with you. There is a reason it is considered one of the best graphic memoirs ever written. Stitches is a collection of profound moments, and by the end of the story, we understand that even in the worst of circumstances one can find their own voice, and be who they want to be even if they are mute.

Small is a wonderful author of books for children. I'd always assumed he must have had a wonderful childhood, that he was loved as a boy, that he was a happy child.

Not so. Stitches tells the story of Small's childhood and teen years and it is a grueling book. His father, a doctor, tried to treat Small for problems himself, and ended up poisoning him with radiation and causing cancer in Small.

Small's mother was a deeply disturbed woman, bitter with her lot, unhappy as a homemaker. She passed on her sadness to her children.

Stitches is a sad story, a tragic story. Grim. Depressing.

Yet somehow Small grew up to change things, to go down a different path than his parents had gone with him. That at least is redemptive.