The Mongoose

by | Jun 5, 2026

After the death of her husband Paulo, Julia reluctantly adopts the garden plot he left behind. She’s distressed one day to find it wrecked, dirt everywhere, plants destroyed. She determines the culprit must be a mongoose because only an animal could have been so ruthless. To her great frustration, no one in her life believes it exists or takes her seriously. As she begins to see traces of it everywhere the mongoose becomes an obsessive focal point for Julia as she wafts through a new period of her life.

A few years ago I lost my mom and discovered that when someone close to you passes, there’s this distinct before and after that suddenly redefines the timeline of your life. You can never return to the before and the after is so incredibly weird that it’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t been there. It’s this bizarre time and place where nothing feels right, where isolation creeps in even when you’re surrounded by well-meaning people, and where you feel out of step with the universe.

Julia is in this strange after place and she’s struggling in the free-fall of grief and mourning after losing Paulo. She sleeps a lot, eats very little, and can’t get back into her routine. But she’s coping just fine, if you ask her. Her family tries to be helpful, but they’re each dealing with their own issues and tend to get under each other’s skin.

Don’t go into this book expecting to see a well defined path through grief or mourning. This is an exploration of the experience of grief and specifically not dealing with it. There is a lot of symbolism and moments that are left up to interpretation, allowing for different understandings from different readers. It’s a deft way to represent the individual responses to loss that show up in our lives and a subtle but impactful investigation of a difficult set of emotions.

Author and illustrator Joana Mosi uses a minimalist, but effective black and white drawing style to convey her story. There are noticeable empty spaces between panels, which also occasionally appear out of order to convey the fragmenting and mixing of Julia’s memories and thoughts. As if the book itself were making physical space for her brain fog. There are memories we don’t see and photos in Julia’s physical space are represented as blank picture frames, further defining an undercurrent of before and after.

There really aren’t any content warnings other than the obvious devastating loss that occurs before the story begins. Some readers might come away from this feeling like they didn’t fully understand everything on every panel or how everything connects, but this is a story where confusion is an important part of the experience. The ending is left somewhat open-ended, mirroring the process of grieving.

This book is best suited for the adult collection but I could see older teens connecting with it as well. Mosi has said that she conceived the idea for this book after the loss of her father and she has such a good grasp on the range of feelings and numbness that Julia experiences that I wonder if there are some autobiographical elements quietly tucked in. I think if you have been in that strange “after” time brought on by a major death in your life, you’ll connect with Julia and her story, even if your grief took a different path. Readers who are less familiar with mourning will still understand Julia’s very human response to such a traumatic event in her life.

The Mongoose
By Joana Mosi
Pow Pow, 2025
ISBN: 9782925114475

NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
Creator Representation:  Portuguese,
Character Representation: Portuguese,

Portugal

by | Aug 31, 2018

Portugal is a semi-autobiographical story that tells the story of three generations of the Muchat family: Simon, his father Jean, and his grandfather Abel. Each section focuses on a different man, though the story is told in the present tense with Simon central to the story. Simon lives in France, where he grew up, teaching art in schools, and getting lost in childish distractions rather than working on his next book. He denies his writer’s block but never creates something he feels confident enough to publish. His lack of friends leaves him isolated in a city that doesn’t feel like home. Simon is invited to a sparsely attended comic festival in Portugal, where his family is from and becomes enamored with the country by his visit. Overwhelmed by emotion, Portugal feels so suddenly familiar that he feels like hugging strangers on the beach. Back in France, unwilling to commit to his girlfriend or buy a house and settle down, a break-up sends Simon to seek validation from a single piece of mail—a wedding invitation from a Portuguese cousin he hasn’t spoken to in years. This convenient excuse to return gives him the chance to attend a family reunion and learn how his family came to live in France, what they left behind in Portugal, and even the origin of his last name.

Simon seems to seek guidance for his future by revisiting his family’s past, returning to a country he never knew but that somehow still feels like home. Portugal is a story of displacement and return, family expectations and boundaries, family truths and generational rifts. The change in Simon is not a mid-life crisis, but more like a revelation, a freedom that can only come after giving up a life that has become more burden than joy.

The plot is a bit slow to pick up during Simon’s part of the story, which may turn readers off, but this is purposeful, as it reflects Simon’s stagnant and directionless life before his visit to Portugal. The dialogue-driven second section keeps the action moving and develops depth to the story by allowing Simon to learn more about his family’s relationships and history. In the third arc, Simon becomes invested in exploring his family’s history more deeply and learning about his grandfather through photos, postcards, and stories.

Pedrosa’s beautiful use of color effortlessly sets the tone for the story and Simon’s growth and development. He experiences a total transformation of character–from a dull, sepia-toned, steeped-in-apathy existence in France to a lighthearted, free, color-outside-the-lines life in Portugal. The stark contrast between the color of France and the color of Portugal is so effective at communicating Simon’s joy and longing for this other life. In the second act, where Simon spends time with his father at a family reunion, the colors and crisp and realistic. In the third act, the colors stray from realism, dominated by washes of yellow, mauve, pastel teal, and orange. The lively watercolors blur beyond their lines at times, making a moment seem like a fond memory as Simon experiences both his present story and his grandfather’s past at the same time.

Portugal begins as a symbol, a desire, but becomes a concrete measure of closure, peace, and building relationships. Instead of using art as an escape from an unfulfilling life, he turns to engaging with the world around him through his art.

This book is a hefty, oversized hardcover that is worth making room for on your shelves. It’s a multilingual book; if you don’t know Portuguese, you should be able to relate to Simon fairly well. It was hard to decide if I should try to translate some dialogue while reading or experience the story as Simon does, understanding little but willing to listen and learn. Pedrosa’s use of colored speech bubbles makes it easy to distinguish what languages the characters are speaking.

In terms of content warnings, librarians should be aware that there is some cursing, a short scene with non-sexual nudity, and some dialogue about sex. This title would work best for adult readers—I don’t think teens would feel quite as engaged with the emotions and soul-searching portrayed here.

Portugal
by Cyril Pedrosa
ISBN: 9781681121475
NBM, 2017