Graphic Novel Review: Check this box if you liked RAISED BY GHOSTS as much as I did

Raised by Ghosts

Cartoonist: Briana Loewinsohn
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Publication Date: February 2025

I’ll be forthright here: comics that have pages of prose mixed with cartooning are not usually for me. Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, however, broke my general preference — folding it up and throwing it away like a discarded note — and I ended up loving this book. Part of the reason is that notes passed between friends in class, late-night journaling, and just generally creating art about your life in real-time is so integral to the themes and plots of the story. Another part of the reason is that Loewinsohn makes the prose passages earn their way into the story, doing so with writing that incorporates pitch-perfect voice for her young main character.

So yes, I really enjoyed Raised by Ghosts. The book is a semi-biographical YA memoir-styled graphic novel set in the early to mid-90s, centered on a protagonist who shares a first name with the author. The cartooning throughout is wonderful. There’s an essential twee quality to it that I might call “slightly-grungy Wes Anderson,” although it’s very much Loewinsohn’s unique style, too. One thing I appreciated about the cartooning in this book was how it looked just as good delivering heartrending childhood moments (I was really affected by the way she mostly talked to her parents around corners or through doors) as it did delving into the protagonist’s psyche.

I don’t think it’s terribly spoiler-y to note that this is a book that in perhaps its most interesting section breaks with reality, and has its main character fall into the papers she spends so much time drawing and writing notes upon. The decision to do this long after the book has endeared young Briana to us, giving us rich insights into her family dynamics, interests, and relationships in the wider world. Because we know all of this about her, the ephemeral sequence provides really deep interiority, the sort it is often difficult to convey in comics. It’s a bold choice, and it’s one that pays off.

And I think it’s also a good summation of this book and what makes it work so well. In many sequences, it reads like a really well-done YA coming of age book, one that makes great use of its ’90s setting. But then it’s also just as likely to serve up really moving passages in its characters voice, or dozens of pages set in her creative id, or anything else really that it needs to in order to provide glimpses of its character’s thoughts and emotions and experiences. 

The last thing I should note is that as someone who went to high school just a few years after this book was set, there’s so many rich and wonderful details that brought me right back to this time in my life. Chief among them was the stuff about the triangle shaped over-folded notes, the way they were sort of ubiquitous during that time in all our classrooms, and I really hadn’t thought about that in many, many years. 

There’s just such a depth of feeling and wonderful attention to detail in this book, and as such, I’m happy to give it might highest recommendation.

Raised by Ghosts is available now.

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