Good Eggs

September 20, 2010
First-time graphic novel creator Potts offers readers a sprawling and lovable memoir about her and her husband’s attempts to become parents. Documenting travails with insurance companies, doctors, family members, and her own body, she shows us the down and dirty details with warmth and humor. While the quest for parenthood structures the book, Potts makes plenty of detours into her past with tales of organizing uncooperative union workers in Texas; learning Spanish and trying her darndest to mix with workers in Mexico; experiencing paralyzing depression back at her parents’ home in Martha’s Vineyard. Potts also writes about her discovery and exploration of her faith. At one point, considering becoming a rabbi, she visits several rabbis; the encounters are funny and poignant and help her along the path of figuring out what truly matters to her. The loopy minutiae of her drawings, in which bodily functions are helpfully anthropomorphized, household pets project personalities as strong as those of the humans around them, and characters crowd the pages in a friendly cacophony of stories, is equally absorbing. Good Eggs joins other graphic novel memoirs about women’s lives, like Persepolis and Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know; a wonderfully told and deeply human story.

September 15, 2010
Potts memoir recounts her efforts to become pregnant but encompasses much beyond exploring her desire for motherhood; clinical depression, religious affiliation, social class, family ties, work experience, travel, and even how she sees pets all inform her being. In addition to explaining different treatments, Potts shows the human side of using them, ranging from the disconcerting casualness of one doctor and the waiting-room dynamics in another clinic. What is basically a story of frustration and sadness at Phoebe and her husband Jeffs inability to get pregnant is leavened throughout by sly and compelling humor. In many panels, drawn with wonderful detail, Potts juxtaposes characters true thoughts with their spoken words, allowing a genuine inside look at how a woman feels the need to protect herself from her mothers passive-aggressive gushing as well as what a friendly dog might have on his mind when greeting a visitor. Potts delivers a highly developed revelation of the layers, beyond coping with being a parent or not, that make up her identity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)