Starred review from July 15, 2024
In this stunning graphic memoir debut, painter Heffernan sets out with her infant son on a hike that begins in the tradition of the flaneur and ends as a survival story. Their walk in the woods offers plenty of time for contemplation of the past and present. Heffernan addresses her deceased mother and recalls her childhood as the youngest of a large Catholic family, who shared a world of imagination and stories with her closest sister. But Heffernan is unprepared for the wilderness, and the seductive mystery of nature dissolves when she realizes she is lost and will have to spend the night outdoors with her baby. After her initial panic, she finds an inner resolve that propels her toward survival (and the nearest highway). The work is a love letter to the strange, intimate, and ecstatic wrung from everyday life. Heffernan’s detailed, finely wrought pages are punctuated with her own bright, surreal paintings, as well as those by the likes of Artemisia Gentileschi, El Greco, and Vermeer. As Heffernan shows, the imagination requires care and attention—much like nature. This vivid narrative is a breathtaking homage to both. Agent: Lyn DelliQuadri, Lahr & Partners.
Starred review from October 1, 2024
A Brooklyn-based artist and new mother's harrowing hike in upstate New York frames a wide-ranging reflection on art and the artist's life. In this graphic novel from painter Heffernan, we meet Julie, with infant Sam strapped to her chest, making her way through a lush forest extending to the horizon. The landscape's myriad greens and multitudinous life awe her and, feeling small under the setting sun, Julie wonders, "What'm I doing here?" The book answers this question in senses big and small, alternating between the increasingly off-course hike and Julie's background as the youngest member of a conservative religious family, first in small-town Illinois and then in the suburban sprawl of the San Francisco Bay Area. Chronic bed-wetting leads to shame and distressing medical intervention for Julie, anchoring her narration in the corporeal. The female body suffers--when the young Julie squirms under her father's judging gaze, or when a friend's excitement at seeing the Beatles provokes savage punishment from the friend's father for perceived carnality--but is also celebrated, as menstrual rags make their way into fine art, and Sam's nursing from Julie's hot breasts brings calm to the lost mother. Julie majors in art; travels Europe with a nasty boy; paints in West Berlin with writer Jonathan, her eventual husband and Sam's father; gets a New York agent who screws her over; and rivetingly explains her artistic motivations in stream-of-consciousness narration that is both erudite and amiable. Classic works of art, their secrets deciphered by Julie's exuberant annotation, punctuate the muted tones and soft lines of the storyline panels, while the author's own vibrant, ornate paintings occasionally explode the page with fecund portraits of humans and hivelike homes. Heffernan takes her time laying out the narrative threads, then lets them echo through one another, painting the rich web of one woman's life. A sumptuous feast for the eyes and the mind.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 11, 2024
Heffernan's visual autofiction is a sensual and surreal confessional told through verdant and poetic images that resonate deep into the soul. Seeking to escape the noise and confusion of life in the city, Heffernan takes her infant son, Sam, on a hike in the country. While the hike through lush and colorful landscapes invigorates Heffernan's artistic sensibilities, it also tears open unresolved emotional wounds in childhood, adolescence, and marriage that make her oblivious to the dangers around her. Sinking deeper off-trail while lost in memory and illusion, Heffernan must reach for what she knows to ensure her own and her son's survival. Heffernan contrasts vibrant, religious iconography against resplendent and fantastical images to show how artistic expression can be testament to the fragilities and celebrations of everyday life. Compositions stir both discomfort and wonder in pursuit of that "bigger joy of seeing clearly; understanding that those behaviors are really just habits--patterns--first to recognize, then to change." A feast for the eyes, Babe in the Woods offers a meditative reflection on how perception shapes artistry and interpretation influences conversation.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.