Book Review- Maus

This review refers to "The Complete Maus" which is a publication that contains book 1 and 2, which are also available separately. Maus is not a widely known book despite it having won a Pulitzer prize, and the only reason I'd heard of it and read it around 15 years ago, is because it caught my eye at my College bookstore in the US. After all, it isn't common for a comic book to be featured in any course's reading list, not to mention win a Pulitzer, and that made me want to pick it up and check it out. In my last post, I'd mentioned my book-a-week book club I'd started with a friend, and after Palace of Illusions and Animal Farm I suggested Maus to her and set about rereading the book again.

In case the illustration on the cover isn't a dead giveaway, I'll spell it out- Maus is about the holocaust and is a true story by Art Spiegelman who sets out to do a comic book depicting his Father's nightmarish journey, and ultimate survival, through the same. Through the book, the Jews have been depicted as mice, the Poles as Pigs and Germans as Cats. Ironically, the last book we'd read as part of the book club was Animal Farm which depicts events taking place right before WWII and of course, also uses animals to depict it's story. Having not read too much about the holocaust since I generally favour fiction to non-fiction, the subject matter was new to me as I'd even skipped out on watching movies on it such as Schindler's List. There is one thing knowing exactly what happened during the holocaust, but it's another to read through a painful narration of a man who went hungry for days and in some instances eats snow to be alive, for whom a small piece of bread is the difference between life and death, and whose family was almost all completely wiped out in the Holocaust.

When discussing the book with my friend during our book club meet, she and her daughter both gave me feedback that they hadn't really enjoyed the book and wondered how it had won a Pulitzer. My friend even said that she felt the story being told in comic form almost trivialized the occurrences. In hindsight, I feel Maus is about so much more than just the holocaust, it is a beautiful depiction of human suffering, the desire to survive in face of torment and the aftermath of that struggle. Spiegelman portrays his tense relationship with his father whom he shows being extremely stingy to the point of embarrassing his son on multiple occasions. At the end of the book he also portrays the Father's unpleasant reaction to an African American, which makes you think about racism and hate breeding hate. The most shocking is that Spiegelman's Mother survives all the torture of the holocaust only to commit suicide years later, without even leaving a note.

All in all I personally very much enjoyed Maus and would highly recommend it to anyone, especially for someone who, like me, may not have read too much about the holocaust.
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