Jennifer Hayden has taken a very personal and painful story about her relationship both with her parents, especially her mother and her own body and made it into a snarky graphic novel.
This is the story of Jennifer growing up and learning how to appreciate your own body as it develops. This is a plot line that every girl and woman can relate to. Who has not lived through the pain and trauma of not feeling like you are becoming a woman at the same rate as the other girls in your school class? Who has not worried that you will never grow in height or develop in breast size to be attractive to the one you want to win over. This is the story of first stuffing your shirt hoping for bigger breasts, and then when cancer strikes in later life, learning to live a full, happy life without those breasts.
Though Hayden tries to use the graphic novel with cartoon drawings comic book speech balloons, this is in the end a serious story about her family and how they deal with the trauma of breast cancer.
How her father sees her mother and their relationship. How her mother sees her own self image and their mother/daughter relationship. And finally how Jennifer Hayden deals with her own body image and her relationship with her husband and children.
I bought this book intending to pass it onto a friend with breast cancer, hoping it would be an uplifting, lighthearted story that would lift her spirits as she goes through breast cancer surgery and recovery, but I don't think I will pass this book along to her. Maybe there will be someone else who will benefit from this book but I am not sure who will really find it uplifting or funny.
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