It’s Been A Banner Year For Art About Complicated Moms

thegamer.com:

With its instantly iconic title and cover, it’s no surprise that I’m Glad My Mom Died is a hit. It is a little surprising, though, how big of a hit it is. Former Nickelodeon star Jennette McCurdy’s memoir of a childhood dominated by her abusive mother sold 200,000 copies in its first week of release in August and has spent every week but one since then at the top of the NYT Bestseller List.

It’s less surprising if you read the book, which is both existentially sad and darkly funny, often on the same page. Despite chronicling McCurdy’s history with bulimia and parental abuse, it’s also a page turner. After reading the first 50 pages over about a week, I tore through the rest of the book in a day as soon as I had a chance.

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Shortly after reading I’m Glad My Mom Died, I got around to watching Petite Maman on Hulu. Celine Sciamma’s follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire is about an eight-year-old girl named Nelly and her parents going back to her mother’s childhood home to clear it out after the death of Nelly’s maternal grandmother. After spending the night, Nelly wakes up to find that her mother left, though Nelly’s dad doesn’t seem too worried. In the meantime, the pair stay to finish clearing up the house and Nelly explores the nearby woods. There she meets a young girl who looks quite a bit like her. When they visit the girl’s house, it’s identical (though decorated slightly differently) to Nelly’s grandmother’s house. She realizes that, through some strange magic, she has met her mother as a child and the two develop a close friendship.

On the surface, I’m Glad My Mom Died and Petite Maman are quite different. In her memoir,