Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries culls similar source material as her autobiographical graphic narrative Persepolis, which depicts the conservative political climate in Iran after the revolution of the late 1970s. While Persepolis is personal in the sense that it is Satrapi’s story of growing up in pre- and post-revolution Iran, it has a larger scope as it also describes the effects of the revolution on Iran at a national scale. Embroideries is a more personal novel, occurring during the span of an afternoon and depicting the conversation of nine women having tea.

In Persepolis, Satrapi used a traditional panel form in telling her story, but in Embroideries she abandoned the panels.

In an interview with Fire on the Prairie, Satrapi comments that she did not use panels to facilitate and mimic the fluidity of conversation. Indeed, the lack of panels allows Satrapi to move from past to present – from the conversation to a memory – and allow her characters to interrupt each other, returning abruptly to the present again. But without boxes, this conversation seems less defined by time or by space. Satrapi’s drawing style is very minimalist: she draws her characters and whatever furniture they are sitting on or objects they might be touching but rarely provides details of the background. There are definite indications of Iranian culture in this novel, but often they come as a surprise. When Satrapi recounts a story in which two women are seen outside in the street, it was jarring for me as the reader to see them suddenly wearing hijab – I was very abruptly reminded of the cultural context of the story. Persepolis can only occur in a specific time and place, but Embroideries is a more universal story.

However, the very candid conversations about sex in which the women engage are not found in every culture. Most people view Iranian women as sexually repressed and oppressed, therefore the explicitness of the stories these women tell might be shocking to some readers. Indeed, I think that Satrapi intends to stretch people’s comprehension of the sex lives of Iranian women. One of the women, a mother of five, has never seen a penis and the women discuss hymen restoration surgery – the title is actually a reference to a slang term for such surgeries – but most of the women speak freely of enjoying sex.

Satrapi’s drawing style fascinates me because the white space seems to define the black areas instead of the opposite.

Embroideries strikes me as a story or example of survival. The title, like the women in this novel, is subversive. The idea of “embroideries” calls to mind afternoons of women sewing together, rather than the more disturbing connotation of hymen reconstruction to prevent women from being harmed for not being virgins when they marry. I do not think that Satrapi intends to criticize these women who have embroideries – as her grandmother says, “If people want to be sewn up, let them be sewn up” – but rather she is presenting the situation in Iran as it is. As disturbing as hymen reconstruction might seem to a woman like myself, Iranian women might see it as a logical solution for wanting to have premarital sex without taking the risk of not being a “virgin” on their wedding night. They are adapting to their cultural climate, seemingly conforming to the establishment while actually subverting it.

Posy Simmonds’ blend of prose and graphic storytelling intrigues me. Her combination of the two forms facillitated multiple storytelling voices—Joubert, Gemma (through her diary), objects (newspaper articles, letters), and an omniscient narrator—which I found similar to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. While there are not quite as many layers of narrative in this text as there are in Maus, Simmonds and Spiegelman both seem to be attempting what many graphic artists do not: they are not merely trying to tell a story with pictures and words, but to tell a story in a way that words alone could not accomplish. Indeed, in other ways Simmonds really pushes the graphic form to echo the subtleties of which language is capable. For example, toward the beginning of the novel when Gemma has very little voice in her own life and indeed the story, Simmonds pushes Gemma into the background, or draws her with Gemma’s back to the reader (or hides her face in some other manner), or draws her only sketchily, without full detail. Take even the cover image for a good example of Simmonds’ skill.

Well, I’ll back up a bit. The title reveals Simmonds’ source material as Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and implies that her work will follow a similar format of the novels of that time—character studies that the author intends for the reader to consider autobiographical or at least biographical. And back to the cover image, which is of Gemma but rather than her image filling the entire space her upper body is framed. The frame and the scroll that bear the title of the text are reminiscient of the era in which Madame Bovary was written, which suggest that Gemma’s life is recounted through the frame of Emma Bovary’s life. Or just a frame in general. Her eyes are averted, not looking at the reader, giving her a sense of mystery—Gemma, while the subject of the text, will not be addressing the reader directly. She is also depicted in a very sexually provocative way: red lips, heavy eye shadow, her lingerie visible. But she is also wearing a coat. Is she trying to hide her sexuality or reveal it? Or maybe a little of both?

Simmonds’ drawing style seems appropriate for the story she is telling—her illustrations have realism and yet fancy as well. While the reader is aware from the first sentence that Gemma will come to an unfortunate end, Simmonds never allows her tone to become too bleak for long. Joubert and many of the ancillary characters provide comic relief to Gemma’s rather unfortunate tale. And with Joubert narrating, the story is like a fairy tale in a way—his somewhat romanticized view of Gemma’s life.

It seems both utterly appropriate and completely irksome that Gemma’s tale is conveyed by a man. Irksome because her voice has been muffled concerning her sexuality. Appropriate because her voice has been muffled concerning her sexuality. It somehow seems fitting that a woman’s adultery be articulated by a man, as is the case with Madame Bovary. With Simmonds offering her version of Boverian events, I would expect her to make the woman’s voice more rather than less prominent.

This collection is composed mostly of short stories from Jessica Abel’s independent comic series, Artbabe. A few of her journalism pieces are included as well. While I like several of the individual stories very much, these pieces do not form a good collection. As with prose short story collections, graphic short story collections should consist of stories with similar themes or images repeated throughout the selections. True, all of the stories in Mirror, Window deal with relationships in some manner, but the journalism pieces really don’t. Some of the stories seem to have been included simply because they are referenced in another story, regardless of quality or a comparative theme. The reader must read “As I Live and Breathe”—a rather uninspiring account of two people harboring crushes on each other trying to begin a relationship—because it introduces the characters of an untitled segment—a fantastic and subtle piece. The untitled segment could have been enjoyed without the set up. Does the reader really benefit from knowing these characters’ back story? Not really. The segment is so short and is so much in the moment that the backstory almost becomes burdensome. “He Said” is seemingly included because “Châiné” references the incident it features. But “He Said” is odd and unclear—is the main character a secret agent or just delusional?—and the description of the events in “Châiné” is sufficient.

Of the stories in this collection, “Châiné” and the untitled segment most impressed me.

“Châiné” – This story is probably my favorite and I found Abel’s artwork the most effective. The first panel of the story manages to set the tone with just an empty hallway. A broom and dustpan sit untouched—evidence of someone trying to clean up a mess. But the next panel reveals a drawer partially open, shirts hanging out—evidence of the true disarray of the main character’s life. Abel then reveals Paloma in pieces, starting with her foot, then the leg…. Abel keeps the frames very tight, trapping Paloma as she feels trapped in her career and her apartment. Anyway, I could go frame by frame, but if you’re interested just read the damn thing. The first really open frame of Paloma is when she drives into the pool at the hotel. The world from which Paloma is escaping—her apartment, her boyfriend, her job—seems to have a general evasive male presence. She retreats to be with her (female) friend, where she feels safe and, as the ending suggests, wants to stay.

Untitled Segment – This segment was the only piece that really challenged me as a reader. Abel has a knack for presenting recognizable characters, but she seems somewhat trapped in this comfort area of identifying with her readers rather than confronting them with something new. Anyway, I really like the contrast in this piece between the woman running gleefully and the man, refusing to run, spouting falsely chivalric palaver.