Squirrel Mother Screams With Subtlety
Megan Kelso's latest graphic short story collection The Squirrel Mother Stories was a pleasant surprise to Seattlest. Far too many semiautobiographical graphic stories fail to connect with their audience, adopting an artistic style incongruent with the subject or navel-gazing to a degree that renders the story largely masturbatory. Kelso avoids those trappings and creates a collection that resonates with the audience on an undefinable level, plucking emotional strings through simple artwork and in most cases a minimal amount of text.
The collection begins with the title story, which cuts between scenes of a young girl being fitted for a dress and a tale of a squirrel mother that leaves responsibility behind to follow her dreams. The combination of the mundane and the surreal pulls the reader into Kelso's vision and setting the tone for the rest of the collection. Emotionally, the stories don't bludgeon the reader, but instead point in a general direction, often resulting in what amounts to an illustrated sigh, evoking memories that may or may not actually exist. You've been there, you've felt that, and there's comfort in knowing that someone is able to articulate it.
While most of the stories are set in the recent past, many in the Seattle area, Kelso also includes a series of stories centering on Alexander Hamilton. These stories act as a non-sequitor to most of the book, since they're researched stories about Alexander Hamilton. It's completely jarring to realize the switch that's happened, but the stories are clever and insightful on their own, so it isn't a misstep and serves to round out the collection.
If the above isn't enough to convince you that this title belongs in your collection, Megan Kelso will be doing a discussion of The Squirrel Mother Stories tonight at Ravenna Third Place books. While we don't expect the same sort of multimedia extravaganza as at the Ellen Forney readings, we do expect Kelso to nonetheless wow us with her wit and charm. She'll be showing Seattle-related panels from The Squirrel Mother Stories Powerpoint-style, followed by a Q&A. She'll likely be signing books as well, so you can have even more of Kelso on your bookshelf.
