Known primarily as a writer of poetry and prose – with work spanning short stories, novels and non-fiction memoir – and active since the mid-1980s, Kercheval turned to drawing during Covid lockdown and took to it, going on to organize her drawings into narratives, ultimately leading to the production of this full length comics memoir which is organized around specific memories.
Kercheval's artwork is simple, bold and colorful, employing a variety of media. All text is presented as a sort of interal narration.
(As an aside, intrigingly, Kercheval taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she is currently an emeritus professor. This is the same school at which Lynda Barry is on faculty; Kercheval is also the exact same age as Barry.)
This volume is a 244 page, full color, perfectbound, 7" x 9" softcover, printed on flat white stock with textured cover.
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Here is some praise from her peers:
"With dreamlike drawings reminiscent of Chagall, Kercheval welcomes us into her meditation on family history, motherhood, grief, love, and displacement, rendered in colors so beautiful they're almost edible."
— Leela Corman, author of Victory Parade, You Are Not A Guest
"The pages of French Girl could be framed and hung in a museum, but lucky for us they are bound in our hands, sequencing a creative vision. With this gorgeous marriage of minimalism and expressionism, Kercheval conjures dreams, fairy tales, and persistent aches; a witness to the surreal pain of lost worlds and the exuberant beauty of remembrance."
— Amy Kurzweil, author of Artificial: A Love Story
“French Girl is an arresting and beautiful memoir that evokes the infinite complications of daughterhood and motherhood in raw, gorgeous color. It pulses with heart, figuratively and literally."
— Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See
"Jesse Lee Kercheval has reached all the way down to the very bottom of a lake called Story and rescued the faces once forgotten there. And French Girl is the beautiful tale these faces have been waiting their whole lives to tell."
— Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Happily
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