Briana
Loewinsohn. Raised by Ghosts.
Fantagraphics, 2025. 224 pp.
ISBN:
9798875000508. U.S. $18.99
https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/new-this-month/products/raised-by-ghosts
“Is there a word in the English
language for nostalgia for the present moment?”, the teenaged Briana muses in
one of the handwritten notes punctuating each deeply '90s nostalgic scene of
this exquisite graphic novel. If not, Briana Loewinsohn’s Raised by Ghosts makes a compelling case that there should be. This
beautifully drawn and deeply felt graphic memoir encapsulates the fleeting,
bittersweet experience of adolescence—especially for those who grew up in the
‘90s—while simultaneously making the reader ache for a past that is just
specific and relatable enough to feel like home.
Through an evocative layering of
moments from her middle and high school years, via four-panel format pages
punctuated by torn-out diary entries or letters, a picture emerges of a lonely,
dreamy girl navigating a world that seems to exist slightly out of reach.
Middle, and then, high school Briana is an artistic and observant latchkey kid,
building a world for herself in the margins of neglect, loneliness, and a
quietly persistent imagination. Raised largely by absence— her physically and
emotionally unavailable divorced parents are never pictured, only spoken to
through closed doors or just “off-screen” —she drifts through her neighborhood
and her school life, documenting the world around her in a way that feels both
intimate and alienating. This fragmented yet cohesive storytelling method
allows the reader to inhabit the protagonist’s headspace, moving through her
world as she does—half in the present, half in an internal landscape of memory
and longing.
The book’s visual style is
breathtaking. Loewinsohn employs a palette of rich, nostalgic earth tones—warm
browns, amber golds, muted greens—that perfectly complement the wistful,
melancholic tone of the story. Her young protagonist self is lovingly rendered,
with expressive hands, long, flyaway hair, freckles, and a wardrobe that feels
both effortlessly specific and deeply personal. Every panel feels like a memory
does, slightly faded but still full of resonance. There’s a beautiful tension
in the way Loewinsohn balances the digital medium with an analog
aesthetic—paper textures and layered shadows make the book feel almost like an
artifact, something lost and found again.
This is a book that thrives on
specificity: the distinct details of Berkeley in the 1990s, the feeling of
being on an AC Transit bus, the excitement of sifting through LPs at Amoeba
Records, the ritual of recording a song off the radio onto a cassette and getting
the liner notes just right. The Walkman, the folded notes passed in class,
chatting on the floor of your room on a rotary phone with a cord, the Swatch
watch ticking on the living room wall, microwaved TV dinners, the nods to
comics like the Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt and the Charlie Brown special —all of
these elements combine to create an atmosphere so rich with authenticity that
you can almost hear the sounds of the ska show at the Berkeley Square or recall
the feeling of being in the car with your best high school friends.
But Raised by Ghosts is more than just a nostalgia trip—it’s a deeply
human exploration of adolescence, loneliness, and the small ways we find
connection that will resonate with young readers now as well as adults who grew
up in that time period. The protagonist is a dreamer, but she’s also someone
struggling to fit in, to navigate the unspoken rules of high school, to figure
out how to be seen in a world where
she often feels invisible. Loewinsohn captures the ennui of youth with an
almost aching precision: the boredom of waiting, the quiet desperation of
wanting to be somewhere else but not knowing where, the way time feels both
infinite and unbearably fleeting when you’re a teenager.
Perhaps the most poignant thread
running through the book is the way friendships provide brief but vital
lifelines—small moments of escape from the weight of isolation, of feeling
alien. The protagonist may be alone much of the time, but she’s not without
connection, and those moments of shared experience—having lunch on the grass
together, passing notes, going to shows—offer glimpses of warmth and
possibility, showing how friends help you pass the time. “Today we can try to
not be here together.”
There’s also an experimental quality
to the book, with a long interlude in which the protagonist literally steps
into her own drawings, blending reality and imagination in a way that feels
both playful and profound. It’s a reminder of how, we create worlds for
ourselves as a means of survival, of understanding, of making sense of our
place in the universe.
For readers who experienced high
school in the ‘90s, Raised by Ghosts
will feel like slipping back into a dreamscape of their own past. But it also
speaks to something more universal—the strange, in-between feeling of being a
teenager, of trying to construct an identity out of fragments, of existing in a
liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Even younger readers who didn’t
grow up in this specific era will recognize themselves in its pages; after all,
nostalgia isn’t just about the past—it’s also about the now, about recognizing
the fleeting nature of the present even as we live it.
Loewinsohn has created something
truly special with Raised by Ghosts.
It’s a book that lingers, not just in its imagery, but in the feelings it
evokes. It makes you remember your own quiet afternoons spent staring at the
ceiling, your own long bus rides with your buddies, your own yearning for
something just out of reach. And perhaps, more than anything, it makes you
nostalgic for the moment you’re living in right now—because one day, this too
will be a memory.
Cassy Leeis an art teacher, a librarian, and
a comics artist, currently working on her MFA in Comics at California College
of the Arts to bring these passions together in the next stage of her career,
in comics librarianship, visual narrative workshops, and creating her own
graphic novel memoir about healing from intergenerational trauma. She also grew
up in the ‘90s passing notes in class and going to shows at the Berkeley Square
so may be a little biased about this book.