a reflective graphic novel about family history and learning to be better than your ancestors. 18 year old ro feels doomed to live a bitterly unhappy and self-absorbed life, like her estranged and recently-passed grandmother, vilma. i love the complexity of vilma's story, how we come to understand the trauma that created her bitterness, and see that she was helpless to outgrow it even as it evolved into emotional abuse.

the intergenerational pain and grief run deep, and the political strife in argentina in the early 2000s makes for a tense backdrop to ro's slow and solitary exploration of her family's stories.

the colorful art is beautiful, though i did struggle with the small cursive writing. the pages are made to be pored over slowly.

Thank you to NetGalley and Fantagraphics Books for providing me with a portion of this book in return for an honest review. My review is belated because the full book was not provided, so I had to wait to hunt down a copy at a library.

Enjoyed this one and look forward to reading a copy in print to see the images on a page. Illustrations were great and I loved the story.

It took me a minute to get used to the art style in this one but once I was I really enjoyed both the story and the art. This is not a time period/location that I have seen a lot of literature from and I thought it did a great job of giving us history without bogging down the family story by doing so.

I feel like I’m not the target audience for Mothballs. The art is pleasant to look at, and I’m sure the story will resonate with people, but I’m not interested in reading about people who have no desire to help themselves.

This was a really interesting book.It starts out when RO UI O moves into her.Grandmother's house named v I l m a who just died. It was really interesting. How the grandmother left Italy and came to Argentina. There's a lot of different plots and themes in this book, but these women had to be very strong. The grandmother was abused and she had to make her new way. The granddaughter had a similar situation, but she started to come out of it. I like how the story came back-and-forth in time. You get a sense of this because modern time she granddaughter was there, but then when you go back the time of her grandmother and Italy when she had to leave to go to Argentina.. This is A.
Really great story.And I like how you authorize it all together

I really enjoyed this one, and ended up checking out the original (in Spanish) halfway through. Loved the art.

Great graphic novel. Focuses a lot of family history and grief. The illustrations are beautiful. I would check the triggers.

It took a while to get into the story, but once I was in it, I was in it. The font choices were hard to read sometimes because of the cursive being used. I really liked the art style and the format in which the story was told. I liked going back and forth between the timelines. It also ended somewhat abruptly, but I would read more from this author in the future.

The book is so captivated with the colorful image and illustration. The story tells us about family, guilf, fears and the search for a way that prevents repeating the mistakes of the past. The memories and histories of the family shrouded in tragedy. This book so exciting and reflecting on family and identity.

This book is a fantastic depiction of the grief that accompanies the planning and carrying out of a funeral and sorting through someone's affairs after their passing. I loved the artwork in this book and the story itself was lovingly written.

A beautifully illustrated graphic novel with a touching, reflective story. Sole Otero combines intricate artwork with emotional depth, making this a captivating and poignant exploration of memory, family, and identity. A must-read for lovers of graphic novels!

Mothballs is a family memoir that spans three generations, blending unreliable accounts from the past in an attempt to make sense of the future. Nineteen-year-old Rocio, amid an identity crisis, tries to understand her grandmother Vilma's life—a woman who fled Mussolini's Italy due to her father's communist beliefs, only to face a life marked by otherness. Capturing the 20th century's treatment of women, the story contrasts the melancholy of oppression and constraints with today’s lonely and directionless life of choices.

Themes and Triggers: Identity, intergenerational trauma, immigration, orthodox thinking, realistic representation of 20th-century women, the rationalization of rape and victim blaming, age of non-existent women's rights, transphobia, homophobia, sexual and physical assault, pregnancy loss, non-sexual nudity.

Disclaimer: If you are looking for a positive review, you should skip mine. Many loved this book, but despite my best efforts, it fell flat for me. Some of its beauty got lost in the translation, and the cursive font was the death of my reading experience. A partial ARC—is that a thing?

Critique:
When tragedy strikes, the onus of offering sacrifice often lies with women. Be it the loss of friends and family due to immigration or giving up their dreams to support the men in the family, cycles of generational trauma are perpetuated without guilt. The matter-of-factness of Vilma’s misfortune and the deft tackling of the unreliability of oral history were impressive.
As strong-willed women surrounded by societal pressures, Rocio and her grandmother are more alike than she knows. As Rocio unspools her immigrant grandmother’s experiences, she begins to understand how her ancestors’ lives have shaped her worldview.
The house, with its gothic presence, warps space and time. The introspective narrative lends to the eerie presence, a shadow lurking just out of reach within this inheritance. In the house that remembers everything, memories drown out the present. The betrayal, the conflicts, and the loneliness saturate the space. I wish this surrealism was explored in more detail.
The art style successfully complements the mood, leaving a lingering sense of gloom. However, the proportions felt inconsistent, and the cursive font was grating. AGHHHHHH!

Thoughts:
While the book addresses heavy themes, it only scratches the surface, leaving much unexplored. For me, the storytelling was the deal breaker. My prior exposure to stories and real-world knowledge of brutality against women left me with no sense of novelty in the narrative.
The storytelling was more telling than showing, which isn’t something you expect from a graphic novel. Don’t get me wrong, the artwork is thought-provoking, but the way the story unfolds grated on my nerves.
Rocio, as the protagonist, seemed relegated to being a looking-glass for her grandmother’s story. A lack of progress on her end made her feel like an ineffective character to introduce the narrative. Themes like identity crisis, women's oppression, immigration, and the house of inheritance offer a chaotic sea of possibilities—none of which were explored in depth.

Conclusion:
While Mothballs has an excellent premise and raises important themes like immigration, intergenerational trauma, and women's oppression, the execution fell flat for me, leaving much of its potential untapped. Despite the thematic appeal, I found the storytelling tedious. Still, I wish the best to the author for future works.

I am grateful to NetGalley, Sole Otero, and Fantagraphics Books for the partial eARC of this graphic novel.

A book of how differently individuals deal with loss and grief.

As Rocio explores her own path of life, she is searching for the stories of her late grandmother's past. This is a touching story for sure.

Thank you NetGalley and Fantagraphics for giving me the opportunity to read this!

Unfortunately I missed the part which said that this is a partial ARC.

Why provide a partial arc? I always feel that partial arcs should get partial reviews but this was such a great book and a gripping story.

The artwork was okay but the written text was hard to decipher. Nevertheless it was a good book but please let reviewers have complete books. A fantastic family memoir with great artwork!

A very well-done graphic novel, that depicts very real world emotions and feelings. I really liked the art style and the narration.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review.

It was a book and it was read. I didn’t feel much towards the characters because it felt a little over the place, but the art style was nice. It just could’ve come together a little bit nicer than it did.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing the ebook in exchange for an honest review. This was a decent graphic novel where the main character dwells into her family history. Honestly, I felt bored in between and had to rush to finish it. It talks about some serious topics which is appreciable. The illustrations are good but the narration couldn't keep me hooked in the beginning. I almost dnfed.

For some reason it is difficult for me to express my opinion about the book. Maybe because, despite the difficult and important topics the story is about, it didn't particularly affect me. I prefer this kind of theme to be developed more deeply and at length in a novel rather than as a comics.
Despite everything, I read it easily and quickly, and I enjoyed the illustrations.

I think the paneling has a good narrative flow. I like the premise of the narrator trying to figure out her family history but also acknowledging the unreliable accounts passed down over time. I would've liked to have seen more development of the narrator's personal journey.

I'm not sure this was for me; I think it was geared towards a different audience. I found it to be a little odd and seemed kind of all over the place. The art work was nicely done though.