05/15/2017
Deeply affecting and harrowing, Moss’s narrative of her husband’s struggle with Lou Gehrig’s disease begins with Harvey feeling a little out of breath while walking with his wife and sons in Rome, then races through a description of his awful deterioration over the next seven months. An uninformed or uncaring medical establishment doesn’t know how to help Harvey cope, leaving his wife to assimilate the physical and emotional changes in their lives. This is not a sentimental story of how suffering ennobles people. Harvey shuts off human contact, desperate to finish the art history research that has been his life’s work; Moss is distracted, clinging to her own sanity but horrified to realize how their mutual trust and tenderness are disappearing bit by bit. Moss’s deliberately naive drawings effectively accompany her painfully direct text. The fact that the family does endure is impressive, and this book demonstrates how art can transmute suffering into literature. (May)
"Before reading Marissa Moss' Last Things I was unaware of how profoundly moved I could be by a graphic novel. With her gentle touch and brave honest voice, we experience how completely one's life and expectations be changed with a single devastating diagnosis. I absolutely loved Last Things!" —Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA
"Before reading Marissa Moss' Last Things I was unaware of how profoundly moved I could be by a graphic novel. With her gentle touch and brave honest voice, we experience how completely one's life and expectations be changed with a single devastating diagnosis. I absolutely loved Last Things!" —Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA
"An important book that needs to be in the world. It's a hard read, but sometimes surviving and resilience is what makes people stronger. Ultimately that's what Last Things celebrates, not dying, but strength, the strength our families give us." —Kathleen Caldwell, A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland CA
"Powerful and beautiful - this book is a great addition to the graphic novel canon." —Ian Lendler, author of The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents MacBeth
"I was swept into the story, swept along." ? Joan Lester, author of Mama's Child
"This is a very powerful story. It needs to be published (and I say that as someone who has no personal connection with ALS). It's a universal story of connection and separation and searching for reconnection after a loss. " —Bill Boerman-Cornell, Professor of Education, Trinity College
"A gripping portrayal of how devastating ALS can be, but also a powerful example of resilience and hope." -Dr. Catherine Lomen-Hoerth, neurologist, ALS clinic, UCSF
"Last Things is one of the most amazingly poignant and honest memoirs - graphic or otherwise — I've ever encountered. This book - which I read in one insatiable sitting — tore my heart in two. Moss handles the material with such a delicate sensibility, both with her drawings and her text, I couldn't help but let her carry me along on her journey of love and loss." -Katie Hafner, contributing writer to the New York Times and author of Mother, Daughter, Me: A Memoir
"This journey is one that we rarely speak about, but it absolutely needs to be told. Marissa's messages to all of us are powerful, profound and touching as she navigates the death of her husband. I feel honored to be part of it." —Stuart Kelman, Founding Rabbi, Congregation Netivot Shalom
"In this deeply affecting graphic memoir, Moss lays out the struggles of trying to live as her husband is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. Her simple drawings reveal the pain and anguish her characters don't know how to express in words, making the format a perfect choice for the story. Those facing similar situations will feel relief at finding their struggles and confusion laid clearly on a page. A sad, haunting memoir." —Marika McCoola, New York Times bestselling author of Baba Yaga's Assistant
"I was swept into the story, swept along." ̶ Joan Lester, author of Mama's Child
"This is a very brave and beautifully drawn account. Anyone coping with the loss of a spouse is going to benefit - and any reader can relate to the family dynamics, the stress of caregiving, and the crisis of a terminal disease." ̶ Eleanor Vincent, author of Swimming with Maya: A Mother's Story
"This is a very powerful story. It needs to be published (and I say that as someone who has no personal connection with ALS). It's a universal story of connection and separation and searching for reconnection after a loss." —Bill Boerman-Cornell, Professor of Education, Trinity College
"Loving, moving, and articulate, Last Things is packed with emotional truth. It's a clear-eyed testimony to the way death arrives, sometimes inch by inch, inspiring the courage and strength and generosity that are the best things we bring to this life." —Jennifer Hayden, Eisner-nominated author of Underwire and The Story of My Tits
"For every person affected ALS, there is a story to tell. From her front-line perspective, Marissa Moss bravely shares her family's challenges during her husband's journey with ALS in a very personal way. We are grateful for her efforts to raise awareness and support for people living with ALS and their families." —The ALS Association Golden West Chapter
04/01/2017
Moss ("Amelia's Notebook" series) and her children are in Rome with her husband, medievalist-on-sabbatical Harvey Stahl, when Harvey begins to tire easily. Back home in Berkeley, CA, he starts a frustrating regimen of medical tests, ending after two months in diagnosis: ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), or Lou Gehrig's disease. Only seven months later, Harvey is dead at age 61. Moss had expected that she and Harvey might grow closer in fighting the illness together. But her formerly warm, loving husband retreats into hostile denial. Feeling distraught and emotionally abandoned, she must cater to his escalating medical needs as well as keep the lives of their three boys relatively normal. Moss uses simple line drawings with ink-washed grays for this poignant account. She reveals medical and social details that do not typically appear in patient information materials or in the press, from diagrams of Harvey's breathing equipment to frank descriptions of patient denial and stigma. VERDICT Perhaps the first graphic memoir about a spouse's death, this personal human drama touches on experiences that everyone has sooner or later. An eye-opener for adults and teens concerned about health care.—MC
01/01/2018
This graphic novel follows one family's struggle with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Harvey, a university professor, enjoys traveling and has a loving wife and three sons. He typically takes charge of things at home, but when he is diagnosed with ALS, life changes dramatically for everyone. Though the story is told from the point of view of Harvey's wife (Moss), who becomes his primary caretaker while juggling work and childcare, readers gain tremendous insight into how everyone, including extended family members, deals with the diagnosis. Moss's illustrations convey the intensity of the decisions and occurrences, painting a picture of this trauma that words alone cannot. Additional graphics, such as charts and lists, shed light on the reality of life with ALS. VERDICT A valuable offering for anyone preparing for or coping with the loss of a family member to disease.—April Sanders, Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL
2017-02-05
A graphic memoir by an author best known for her children's books details the devastating effects of her husband's amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on her entire family.Though Moss has sold millions of books—particularly the Amelia's Notebook series—she explains in the acknowledgments that "this book wasn't easy to sell. Many agents and editors felt it was too dark or sad." It is both of those, as the author subverts the stereotype of the noble caregiver and the patient whose fatal illness teaches everyone about the true meaning of life. Moss offers no clichéd heroism. "We're told that major illness deepens us, makes us grateful for our lives," she writes. "But for me, ALS doesn't work that way. I'm not a bigger, nobler person and neither is [my husband] Harvey." When Harvey received his diagnosis and quickly saw his health decline, he seemed to resent his wife's attempts to help him or be closer to him. And she resented him back, not only for the impositions his illness made on her and his lack of appreciation, but for the way it altered the dynamic of the entire family. "But it's not his disease," she maintains, after he decreed that he would notify their children. "It's rotting away at all of us," writes Moss. "First it killed our marriage. Now it's destroying our family. And then Harvey will die. What will be left of us?" Instead of the concern for Harvey that one would expect as a focus, the author is brutally honest about how hard she took his illness and how it affected her. There are brief flashes of a return of intimacy and connection between them—and sessions with a therapist provided some perspective—but it seems that only after his death could she truly reconnect with the husband she loved.When Moss writes, "this isn't how it's supposed to be," other readers who aren't feeling what they're supposed to be feeling could well find comfort in a kindred spirit.
