In this brilliantly told graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning her complex relationship with her mother — a voracious reader and passionate amateur actor, a woman whose creative aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood.
As Bechdel grapples with having become the artist her mother wanted to be, she takes readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to her own adult love life. Ultimately, though, she comes back to Mother and their fragile, poignant truce.