Still Life with Remorse

"Maira Kalman continues her quest for meaning and happiness in a troubling world with Still Life with Remorse, another quirky, philosophical graphic memoir. Musings on the lives of great writers and composers are interspersed with disquieting bits of family history, including her father’s divergent trajectory from that of his brothers after they left Belarus for Palestine in the 1930s. Kalman’s splendid Matissean illustrations, awash in her by now trademark pink furnishings and flowers, literally brighten the picture. She hilariously notes that deep regret is so pervasive in her family that they even have a name for the suffering that follows a potential disaster that might have happened but didn’t: “the possible-probable remorse tense.”"