My Begging Chart
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“One of comics’ preeminent humorists.”—AV Club
Keiler Roberts mines the passing moments of family life to deliver an affecting and funny account of what it means to simultaneously exist as a mother, daughter, wife, and artist. Drawn in an unassuming yet charming staccato that mimics the awkward rhythm of life, no one’s foibles are left unspared, most often the author’s own.
When Roberts considers whether or not to dust the ceiling fan, it’s effectively relevant. She can get lost in the rewarding melodrama of playing Barbies with her daughter and will momentarily snap out of her depression. Her harmless fibs to get through the moment are brought up by her daughter a year or two later, yet without hesitation Roberts will request that her daughter’s imaginary friend not visit when she is around. Her MS diagnosis lingers in the background, never taking center stage.
In My Begging Chart, her most encompassing work yet, Keiler meditates on routine and stillness. The vignettes of her everyday life exude immense presence, making her comics thoroughly relatable and reflective of our all-too-human lives as they unfold with humour, sadness, and relieving joy. In transporting these stories onto paper, Keiler observes, and at times relishes, a fleeting present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roberts (Rat Time) returns with a thoroughly entertaining collection of autobiographical comics featuring her distinctive blend of deadpan humor and quirkily sincere flights of fancy. She observes life with husband Scott, pre-teen daughter Xia, and dog Crooky with equal parts appreciation and bemusement. "Xia and I played Barbies more intensely than ever before," Roberts tells her mother, recalling Xia-as-Barbie improvising her way through a job interview, a scene followed by another in which the dolls awkwardly converse about art (imitating, one assumes, life). In another vignette, Roberts digs into her curious satisfaction at having spent weeks destroying her old sketchbooks and journals: "I'm being more productive whenever I'm not making anything." Moments in which, for instance, a plate of Christmas cookies slips to the ground, to be picked up and placed in the trash one-by-one, are quiet examples of malaise creeping in. But Roberts remains exacting; when praised by a friend for being self-aware, Roberts quips she's not a "better person" but only able to "see my flaws with absolute clarity." The droll line drawings gently capture the oddity of quotidian activities, such as vacuuming the blades of a ceiling fan. Roberts's slightly warped perspective hilariously and poignantly reflects back to readers the transient absurdity of domestic life.
