The Last Time We Spoke: A Story of Loss

by Jesse Mechanic

Overview

Starred Review from Publishers Weekly, “Such reflections will ring painfully familiar to anyone who has stumbled around in the darkness of grief. This vulnerable graphic memoir cuts deep.”

An emotional and heartbreaking memoir of the author’s lifelong struggle with his mother’s death from cancer.

Grief never goes away.

When he was a teenager, Jesse Mechanic’s mother passed away after a long struggle with cancer. In this memoir, he looks back on that time, and on the ways that experience followed him throughout his life. Struggling with school while dealing with attentional problems and the overwhelming tsunami of grief, this book tells the story of Mechanic’s slow work to figure out a life for himself. It’s about obsessive-compulsive disorder, intrusive thoughts, and depression—straight-A’s turning to straight F’s, and smiles to blank stares. It's about what loss can teach us, and how trauma can be both debilitating and beautiful. It’s about standing in dark rooms for long enough for your eyes to adjust.

And graffiti. It’s about that too.

With powerful visuals and thoughtful, poignant text, this graphic memoir challenges readers to keep going in the face of the hardest times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951491420
Publisher:	Street Noise Books
Publication date:	09/09/2025
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jesse Mechanic is an opinion columnist, essayist, and artist. He has published work in Mother Jones, In These Times, HuffPost, Truthout, and other publications. Jesse enjoys woodworking, the television show Cheers, and working diligently to dismantle the various oppressive systems that define our world. The Last Time We Spoke is his debut graphic novel.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/05/2025

“The last time we spoke, I was 14 and terrified,” writes journalist and artist Mechanic at the outset of his deeply moving and visually innovative debut about his mother’s death, at age 49, of cancer. Afterward, Jesse’s grief unleashes a torrent of mental struggles, the cruelest of which are intrusive thoughts that tell him, “You wanted her to die. Be honest.... You’re happy, overjoyed even.” His OCD is a “stone-hearted internal bully,” represented by a giant rendered in scribbled lines. The narrative employs spacious, architectural, and often cannily symmetrical illustrations to depict his “cascading” psychological landscape. After feeling nearly suicidal, he discovers punk and hip-hop and “storytelling and pain” in music that helps him escape the torments of his own mind. Looking back now that he’s a parent himself, Mechanic realizes how hard it must have been for his mom to leave her family unwillingly and too soon. The way he currently lives—urgently, artistically—is, he writes in tribute to his mother, “because of all the things you taught me while you were here, and what your absence has taught me as well.” Such reflections will ring painfully familiar to anyone who has stumbled around in the darkness of grief. This vulnerable graphic memoir cuts deep. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review “Such reflections will ring painfully familiar to anyone who has stumbled around in the darkness of grief. This vulnerable graphic memoir cuts deep.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher