Reviewing Leela Corman’s Unterzakhn

Sometimes I’ll have lots to say about a book; other times it’s a struggle.

I’ve written dozens if not hundreds of book reviews, but quite a few of them were quite short. I was one of amazon.ca’s core reviewers for awhile, reading mostly Canadian books (okay, so I skimmed the one that was a history of the metric system. Sue me) for the site. I’m a huge comics fan so I love graphic novels, which also happen to be fairly quick reads. But in some cases it’s difficult to find much to say about them.

Such is the case with Unterzakhn. A new (and, I believe, the first) graphic novel by American illustrator Leela Corman, it’s historical fiction, taking a look at the lives of two Jewish sisters living in New York’s Lower East Side in the first years of the previous century. I liked it a lot – though I had a little trouble following it at times – but beyond that I didn’t have much to say. However, I’m happy about using a fun little anecdote about Mad Magazine that I discovered. (You can read the full review here.)