Anybody of a certain age will know who Jordan Mechner is if I tell you he made the video game Prince of Persia. Back then, that early 90s keyboard-operated PC game occupied a lot of my time during slow hours on my 9-1-1 overnight shifts. Mechner’s new graphic memoir fits in with many other memoirs about the Holocaust, going way back to “Maus”.
The difference between Spiegelman’s Maus and Mechner’s Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Childhood is the amount of time Mechner spends comparing his life in the 2000s with his father’s and grandfather’s during World War 2 in Austria-Hungary. While Mechner switches back and forth between the US and France for work, bringing his teenagers and a reluctant wife along, we see how he handles the challenges of a changing world and personal life braided together with his discoveries of how his father and grandfather handled their challenges.
Mechner’s investigations with his father seems more loving and patient, though, compared to the tone of Maus. This may be due to the structure of the panels, which alternate between black and white background, yellow background, and blue background. The story alternates frequently between time periods and locations, as Mechner compares moments of his family life to his grandfather’s and father’s. Red is restricted only to the flashbacks that depict Nazi flags or armbands. This artistic mechanism helps keep the story straight in the reader’s mind. Without it, it would be difficult to keep track of whose story is presently being told. Mechner has a large family, and more than once I flipped back to clarify who in his family each page referred to.
Personal photographs start each chapter, which also makes the story more intimate and reminds me that each survivor’s story is unique. At 326 pages, Mechner’s title is about the same length as both Maus titles put together, but Replay somehow seems a little more bogged down in plot in the first half of the story. The second half moves more fleetingly, though. Readers will be fascinated by Mechner’s family’s close calls in attempting to leave Europe.
This is a good addition to other graphic memoirs that libraries may already own, like Maus, R.J. Palacio’s White Bird, or Kiku Hughes’s Displacement. I’d shelve it in the Adult section, and it’s appropriate for teens and adults.
Replay Memoir of an Uprooted Childhood
By Jordan Mechner
Macmillan First Second, 2024
ISBN: 9781250873750
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
