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From Publishers Weekly
Spiegelman's startling comic about the Holocaust, which revolves around his survivor father's experiences, won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Spiegelman's Maus, A Survivor's Tale (Pantheon, 1987) was a breakthrough, a comic book that gained widespread mainstream attention. The primary story of that book and of this sequel is the experience of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany during World War II. This story is framed by Spiegelman's getting the story from Vladek, which is in turn framed by Spiegelman's working on the book after his father's death and suffering the attendant anxiety and guilt, the ambivalence over the success of the first volume, and the difficulties of his "funny-animal" metaphor. (In both books, he draws the char acters as anthropomorphic animals-- Jews are mice, Poles pigs, Germans cats, Americans dogs, and French frogs.) The interconnections and complex characterizations are engrossing, as are the vivid personal accounts of living in the camps. Maus and Maus . . . II are two of the most important works of comic art ever published. Highly recommended, espe cially for libraries with Holocaust collec tions. See also Harry Gordon's The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania , reviewed in this issue, p. 164; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/91.
- Keith R.A. DeCandido, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Together with the much-acclaimed first volume of Spiegelman's Maus (1987--not reviewed), this unusual Holocaust tale will forever alter the way serious readers think of graphic narratives (i.e., comic books). For his unforgettable combination of words and pictures, Spiegelman draws from high and low culture, and blends autobiography with the story of his father's survival of the concentration camps. In funny-book fashion, the all-too-real characters here have the heads of animals--the Jews are mice, the Nazis are rats, and the Poles are pigs--a stark Orwellian metaphor for dehumanized relations during WW II. Much of Spiegelman's narrative concerns his own struggle to coax his difficult father into remembering a past he'd rather forget. What emerges in father Vladek's tale is a study in survival; he makes it through by luck, randomness, and cleverness. Physically strong, he bluffs his way through the camps as a tinsmith and a shoemaker, and also exploits his ability with languages. Every day in Auschwitz, and later in Dachau, demands new bribes and masterly bartering. All of this helps explain Vladek's art of survival in the present: his cheap, miserly behavior; his disappointment over Spiegelman's marriage to a non-Jew; his constant criticism of his own second wife and his son; and even his inexcusable racism. Haunted by the brother who died in the camps, Spiegelman (born in postwar Sweden) also mourns his mother, who survived only to commit suicide in the late 60's. Within the time span of the writing of Maus (1978-91), Vladek died, and Spiegelman now must sort out his complex feelings as he reflects on the success of the first volume--a success built on the tragedy of the Holocaust. With all his doubts, Spiegelman pushes on, realizing that his book deserves a place in the ongoing struggle between memory and forgetting. Full of hard-earned humor and pathos, Maus (I and II) takes your breath away with its stunning visual style, reminding us that while we can never forget the Holocaust, we may need new ways to remember. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A Complex and Moving Story of the Cost of Survivorship
Although Maus provides some useful insights into camp live, the best descriptions of that are to be found in the memoirs of Levi and Wiesel and in the "Genocide" segment of the BBC's World at War series. Maus is really about survivorship, its true costs, and about how the children of survivors and in a larger sense all of us are survivors of the Holocaust burdened by collective guilt and owing a debt to past and future generations.

The graphic novel technique allows Spiegelman to tell several tales at once -- it's not just the Auschwitz narrative that is important, but the current effects of the experience on Spiegelman's father Vladek, mother Anja, and on Spiegelman himself. The book ends with Vladek exhausted, saying good night, in a Freudian slip, to "Richieu", Spiegelman's older brother who died in the Holocaust. This is a fitting image, capturing the direct loss of the Holocaust as well as the cost to guilt ridden survivors like Vladek and succeeding generations who could never quite measure up to the memory of the victims.

The most striking images in the book are two photographs: one of the beautiful and angelic Richieu and another of Vladek as a young man in a crisp camp uniform. Vladek was a striking and charismatic figure, who survived on the basis of quick wits mixed in with considerable luck. Had there been no Holocaust, he would have been a fabulously successful industrialist and entrepreneur. But surviving the Holocaust cost him his previous life and reduces him, tragically, to a pathetic figure who guilts his son into seeing him by making up a heart attack, who drives his current wife crazy, who becomes a caricature of the miserly Jew whose cheapness is maddening.

The most moving and redeeming quality of Vladek is his love for his first wife Anja, who also survived the Holocaust owing in considerable part to the help and resourcefulness of Vladek. Yet, she commits suicide 25 years later, much like Primo Levi. Vladek destroys her journals in a fit of grief, and it is this loss that haunts the book. The mystery of Anja's death is never addressed or resolved.

This is a complex and moving work.

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Interesting
I must say that I find this work hard to properly describe in terms of how I feel about it. I think that it was a fascinating look at one man's experience in the Holocaust, but an equally important aspect is Art's interaction with his father during their conversations. This seems like an honest portrayal, especially since Art isn't afraid to include things that may make himself or his father look bad (he isn't always the most sympathetic son, at times a narrow-minded father). I think connecting the story of what happened then, and how it's effects are apparent for the rest of a person's life (although different people reacted in different ways) is interesting. The way this is written is especially effective, because it truly feels like Vladek is telling you his story first hand.
As for the artwork, although it isn't my favorite style, it seems to fit for this story. The simple, unpolished look is compatible with this story which is honest and raw. Finally, I would like to add that the second installment of this comic is darker, and more depressing and sad at times, but it is also quite powerful and once you read Maus I, you must (and will want to) read Maus II in order to feel any closure with the story.