Back in print: the debut graphic novel from the author of The Three
Paradoxes. Mother, Come Home is Paul Hornschemeier's piercing
graphic-novel debut: it secured the cartoonist's place as one of his
generation's most skillful and ambitious practitioners. Mother, Come Home
quietly studies the inner lives of recently widowed David and his 7-year-old
son, Thomas. Thomas struggles desperately to keep up appearances while his
father, a professor of symbolic logic, becomes lost in abstractions. Father and
son begin to retreat into their fantasies, but only one emerges. Mother, Come
Home is masterfully drawn: Eisner-, Harvey-and Ignatz-Award-nominated
Hornschemeier's controlled brushwork is clean, and his nine-panel page layouts
pace David's inexorable descent into utter despair. Hornschemeier is equally
precise when it comes to Mother, Come Home's color palette: subdued but
warm, which suits the story's melancholy and contemplative mode. Mother, Come
Home is a powerful work, and, because of its universal themes of anguish and
loss, has resonance beyond its core audience of alternative-comics
readers.