Kill My Mother: A Graphic Novel

by Jules Feiffer

Hardcover, 2014

Status

Checked out
Due Dec 25, 2023

Publication

Liveright, (2014)

Description

When three daunting dolls intersect with one hapless heroine and a hard-boiled private eye, deception, betrayal, and murder stalk every mean street.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Mary_Overton
I was horrid to my mother when I was 15, and my lovely daughter was horrid to me when she was fifteen. So right away, I found this book fun when it opened with a horrid 15 year old girl jitterbugging and dissing her working mother. Her boyfriend says, mid-dance-step: ‘“Annie, your mother’s
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gonna kill us if she finds us,”’ and, snotty monster that she is, Annie replies, ‘“I could kill my mother.’”
From there, the tale expands into a female-centric story that turns on its head the hard-boiled male-centric noir detective genre. The plot twists and turns … mistaken identities, revenge motifs, car “chases,” jealous husbands, chance meetings of people who haven’t seen each other in 10 years … can be absurd and improbable but that craziness seems to be part of the noir parody. Any story weakness is overcome by Feiffer’s lovely, kinetic, frenetic art. I read this twice, so I could go back and see how Feiffer set up the story and to savor the visual layout.
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LibraryThing member NinaCaramelita
With graphic novels I kinda know from the first pages whether I'm gonna like it or not. The plots and twists might be great, but if I don't like the artwork, it'll be harder to really get into the story itself. I'm quite black and white when it come to these matters - with a few exceptions, when I
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go numb.
With Kill my Mother, I hardly had time to pay any attention to any of this - in fact it was quite a delight to catch myself watching a movie instead. Stronger even, Feiffer managed to make me part of one! And not just any!
Film noir told in a graphic novel. Impressive!
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LibraryThing member bookcrazed
Feiffer has created a masterfully dark comedy, wittily embracing stock characters—like a small-time criminal with a twisted heart of gold who aspires to higher crime, an evil twin, a pretty-boy narcissist, and on and on. The plot unfolds through a increasingly complicated weaving that, just as it
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begins to become impossibly intricate, begins to loosen, then quickly unravel in a crescendo of karmic paybacks. Everyone gets their due, including a very Some Like It Hot resolution for the only two characters who remain endearing throughout the narrative.

As some readers have criticized, you can get lost among the multiple faces of multiple characters, losing your way for pages at a time. The brown and black images are artistically superb, but color may have made it easier to track the personalities from one scenario to the next. And while Feiffer’s method of overlaying different events that transpire at the same point in time with stacked word balloons, I think I may have welcomed an old-fashioned meanwhile-back-at-the-ranch device to help me make the connection.

Feiffer’s illustrations are an artistic triumph, and his plot a testimony to his first-rate brain. After having read it once four years ago and again recently, I have to admit that thinking about it is more fun than reading it. It’s going to be one of those books that is worth several reads, each time finding more buried treasure.
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LibraryThing member lilibrarian
Three tall and mysterious women are at the center of the mystery here, and their lives intersect with Elsie and her daughter Annie in a variety of ways.
LibraryThing member Sullywriter
A quite clever and entertaining tribute to film noir and hard-boiled private detective stories. Check out the dedication page to see the great authors and filmmakers to whom Feiffer pays homage.
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer was one that I thought I was going to love. And I think I would have except I found the artwork confusing. There were a number of leading ladies, all were blonde and had rather pointed noses and I found that I couldn’t tell them apart. This caused me to be
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constantly flipping back and forth trying to figure out who was who.

This was a noir story told in two parts. The first is set in Bay City (San Francisco) in 1933. The second is set mostly in Hollywood during the 1940’s. I don’t want to give away any of the plot points, but the main characters included a very angry young lady called Annie, her smart but too nice Mom, Elsie, and a trio of blonde look alikes, There is an involved plot and gun play comes into the story in both decades.

Totally done in blacks, greys and whites with an almost sketch like feel to the artwork, this story is an homage to the 1940 noir movies. As I said I had trouble separating the characters, but it was a different and interesting story and definitely aimed at adults. There is nudity and violence but this is offset by some quirky humor and lots of tips of the hat to 1940’s Hollywood.
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LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer was one that I thought I was going to love. And I think I would have except I found the artwork confusing. There were a number of leading ladies, all were blonde and had rather pointed noses and I found that I couldn’t tell them apart. This caused me to be
Show More
constantly flipping back and forth trying to figure out who was who.

This was a noir story told in two parts. The first is set in Bay City (San Francisco) in 1933. The second is set mostly in Hollywood during the 1940’s. I don’t want to give away any of the plot points, but the main characters included a very angry young lady called Annie, her smart but too nice Mom, Elsie, and a trio of blonde look alikes, There is an involved plot and gun play comes into the story in both decades.

Totally done in blacks, greys and whites with an almost sketch like feel to the artwork, this story is an homage to the 1940 noir movies. As I said I had trouble separating the characters, but it was a different and interesting story and definitely aimed at adults. There is nudity and violence but this is offset by some quirky humor and lots of tips of the hat to 1940’s Hollywood.
Show Less
LibraryThing member yeremenko
Nice period story, great art. Hard to suspend disbelief as it goes on.
LibraryThing member ritaer
Like other readers I found this story confusing in places.even on a second reading.

Language

Original language

English

Barcode

10486
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