"Readers will find Fawkes more than succeeds in her diary-endeavor. Her trips abroad are euphoric and sometimes stressful. Her kids are frustrating and funny. Time with her mom is a particular kind of painful, and a reminder that none of it will last. Occasional landscapes and other interstitial drawings give readers a breath and an idea of the breadth of Fawkes’ talent. A substantive, tender work of recording and remembering." – Booklist
"The collection reaches an emotional climax with “The House on Thurman Street,” which describes a visit to her parents at her childhood home in Portland, Ore. She contrasts the reminiscences the visit stirs in her with her mother’s devastating memory loss due to Alzheimer’s, a disease Fawkes realizes can be hereditary. “The jaws of my memory want to close on this house so hard,” she concludes. Combining small moments that will ring true for many readers, Fawkes uncovers big themes in this funny-sad, satisfying mosaic." – Publishers Weekly
"The collection showcases Fawkes’s versatility with different styles. The brisk, four-panel template of her “daily diary” comics appears alongside the more measured and detail-rich look of her longer pieces. The comics strike different notes that will resound in different ways with different readers. Relayed as short segments set in a variety of settings and situations, Persephone’s Garden is an intimate graphic autobiography of a most unusual kind." – Foreword
Fawkes captures the beauty of the Grecian landscape: the bustle of busy ports, quiet villages baking under the summer sun, and days filled with sightseeing, swimming in the ocean, and lazy pleasure-seeking―interspersed with inevitable bouts of travel fatigue and ordinary family strife. The result is a work that’s more vivid, immersive, and entertaining than any vacation slide show could ever be. ― The Comics JournalFawkes has written about her children before, but much of her work tends to focus on either mythology or archaeology. Not in this book, as Fawkes expertly and honestly captures the ways in which children (and pre-teens in particular) are both terrible and wonderful. ― High-Low
Fawkes is an award-winning cartoonist who hasn’t really gotten that big PR breakout yet. Excellent pieces like this should change that. I think any woman who has a mother or is a mother will relate to the intense body scrutiny that little girls have for their moms ― at least I do! ― Comics Beat
The control of her other work, like Alles Ego, is replaced with a simplicity and an immediacy that makes these comics feel lived in. It’s hard to say which of Fawkes’s styles I prefer more. ― Sequential State
