Starred review from June 26, 2023
New Yorker cartoonist Mahdavian debuts with a charming, meditative graphic memoir that recounts three years he lived in the rural Midwest. In summer 2016, Iranian American Mahdavian and his wife, Emelie, move from the San Francisco Bay Area to six acres in Idaho to live “the millennial dream.” The locals mostly welcome them (and their tiny off-the-grid home), but “people in small towns,” Mahdavian says, “always know who you are.” Casual bigotry runs through neighbors’ nosy questions (“We were debating where your name is from”) as he and Emelie attempt to reopen the local theater (“You’re not trying to bring that Boise-Portland-Seattle-San Francisco artsy-fartsy social-justice-warrior crap here, are you?”) and work on their garden. During their struggle to conceive a child (eventually they do), the land also becomes a fertile canvas to interrogate identity and belonging in a country that rejects the unfamiliar. Poetic asides on botany, etymology, and Persian literature are interwoven between well-timed comedic beats, with Mahdavian unafraid to mock himself. The minimalist black-and-white art captures the intricate connections between place and identity, skillfully managing both moments of cartoon comedy and elegant environmental portraiture. This exceptional debut is a sublime self-examination that’s perfect for fans of Yeon-sik Hong’s Uncomfortably Happy or Eleanor Davis’s The Hard Tomorrow. Agent: Dan Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc.
Starred review from July 1, 2023
This is a charming, hilarious, and at times frightening memoir about the years Navied and Emelie (and their dog, Stanley) Mahdavian spent building a home in remote Idaho after being pushed out of the San Francisco Bay area. Presented in three parts, plus an epilogue, the story is told across the cycles of seasons and of life, where the family learns to navigate the harsh climate (hot summers, dangerously cold winters, and unpredictable fires), the perils of farming, and the (in)viability of small-town theaters, and about the nuances of place and people. We learn alongside the author about the people's resourcefulness, cultural touchstones, and biases that keep the town rooted in a white-dominated frontier mentality that other parts of the country seek to forget. Mahdavian interrogates these experiences, drawing on his own upbringing as the child of Iranian immigrants, the insights of other cultures and their histories, and through the environmental movements of the U.S. Aldo Leopold's land ethic is found throughout, not just in the many quotes from A Sand County Almanac but in the actions of the author and in the choices in what moments to illustrate--a truck's bed full of dead coyotes, for instance, in Mahdavian's simplified, black-and-white style, nonetheless invokes the feeling of Leopold's green fire dying. This will appeal to readers of memoir, social commentary, and, in a minor spoiler, graphic medicine.
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Starred review from July 1, 2023
A cartoonist and his wife start a life in rural Idaho. Late in 2016, New Yorker cartoonist Mahdavian and his wife moved to a remote area of Idaho, built a tiny house on several acres of land, started a garden, and had a baby. Along the way, they experienced culture shock--e.g., the vegetarian author was pressured to hunt deer. Mahdavian's debut book is a whimsically drawn, witty, lyrical graphic memoir. Early on, the author explains that he and his wife were being priced out of their home in San Francisco. "We had visited rural Idaho on a whim the summer before and had fallen in love with the landscape and the freedom it seemed to promise," he writes. In addition to chronicling his life on their patch of wilderness, Mahdavian describes their neighbors--a relative term in this spread-out landscape--with gentleness, humor, and sensitivity even when they treated him with suspicion. "You're not a Muslim, are you?" a woman in town asked him. He thinks about it: "Had I given some indication that I might be Muslim? Was I subconsciously orienting myself toward Mecca? But it wasn't anything I had done. It was my face." Another neighbor was convinced that the Islamic State group had set up training camps throughout the state. "It's amazing what the media are told not to tell us," he told Mahdavian. "The radical Muslims live among the not radical ones. Like they did in their own countries." But Mahdavian isn't overly concerned with politics. His lovely pages are filled with gooseberries and cottonwood trees, an exploration of the etymology of the word hearth, and a two-headed calf. Mahdavian and his wife ended up staying in Idaho for only three years, but this moving book serves as a lasting commemoration of their time there. A beautifully drawn memoir full of humor, intelligence, and sensitivity.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.