The Book of Sarah

Sarah Lightman has been drawing her life since she was a 22-year-old undergraduate at The Slade School of Art. The Book of Sarah traces her journey from modern Jewish orthodoxy to a feminist Judaism, as she searches between the complex layers of family and family history that she inherited and inhabited. While the act of drawing came easily, the letting go of past failures, attachments and expectations did not. It is these that form the focus of Sarah’s astonishingly beautiful pages, as we bear witness to her making the world her own.

‘An extraordinary treasure ...

‘I love The Book of Sarah. This is a deeply layered work … a memoir that is rich with revelations.’

MAUREEN BURDOCK

SAMANTHA BASKIND

‘I loved this subtle memoir about

‘Absolutely beautiful. It’s so moving

heartfelt and honest, searching and tender.’

ARIELA FREEDMAN

‘Stunning … The power of the book

lies in the atmosphere created by a kind of distilled emotion in the words, alongside the very haunting images.’ ANN MILLER

‘An achingly poignant, profoundly moving and, ultimately, hopeful book.’ RUTH GILBERT £19.99 Graphic Memoir / Jewish Studies

www.myriadeditions.com

to see such intimately domestic moments collected and sanctified.’

LEAH VINCENT

‘Full of the most wonderful

drawings. An important feminist book – as well as a real joy to read.’

BOBBY BAKER

THE

BOOK OF

SARAH Sarah Lightman

Sarah Lightman

Judaism, feminism, bad dates and good books, the families we are born into and the ones we make.’

THE BOOK OF SARAH

SARAH

THE BOOK OF is missing from the Bible, so artist Sarah Lightman sets out to make her own. Questioning religion, family, motherhood, and what it takes to be an artist, this is a deeply subversive visual autobiography from the Jewish heartlands of north London.

‘Visually stunning, rich, complex, nuanced and moving.’ ARIEL KAHN

Ellerdale Road: 1975 and 2013. 28

My son Harry and I share this address on our birth certificates. 29

Ethics of the Mothers: my mother, Naomi, daughter of Daphne, used to say: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Life is just swings and roundabouts.â&#x20AC;? 30

Harry, at least, would know about swings. (His favourite outing.) The thrill, the sense of flight. The inevitable decline. The journey that always leads back home. 31

I shared a room with Esther, crawling into her bed at night. I was already looking for something from someone else, coupled with an uncertain anxiety about inhabiting my own space.â&#x20AC;¨ And now, every night, we hear the door creak, then shuffling footsteps, as Harry climbs into our bed. He demands we hold his hand as he makes himself comfortable in between our two pillows. Then my husband, Charlie, exhausted, creeps into the spare room for some uninterrupted sleep. 32

At art school, showing artwork about home to the outside world was a way to keep one foot back in Hampstead. 33

34

Families are like glass.

Constructing yourself...

You see yourself and reality through them.

in an already established community. 35

Mummy said Daniel will never find a girl to marry…

I don’t think Daniel ever got over the shock of me learning Latin. 36

who is as good as his sisters.

Wearing Esther’s shoes didn’t help me understand myself.

Moving out of home was supposed to define where I was propped up and to help me stand up on my own.

I suppose I still needed propping up.

Perhaps all I did was recreate the world I left behind. Put us all together in the same room and nothingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s changed.

And I still squashed Esther a bit. 37

It was strange to be drawing my family from photos, when they were all living around me. But I couldn’t draw them face on. Like a bright light, only looking away reveals it. Years later, my tutor said of my obvious unhappiness: ‘We should have helped you more.’ When she told me this, I hardly understood what she meant. At the time I’d felt supported, noted, recognized, and I hadn’t known what I was missing. I’d been unhappy for so long that I thought it was part of my identity. 38

Last weekend, I asked my friend Maureen how I should deal with this feeling of shame and sadness about those incomplete years. She says I should be more understanding of my younger self. “Once,” she explained to me, “I met my younger self and I told her she was going to be an artist and that helped her.” Look Sarah, look what you will become. It will get better. Not perfect, but better. 39

Sarah Lightman has been drawing her life since she was a 22-year-old undergraduate at The Slade School of Art. The Book of Sarah traces her journey from modern Jewish orthodoxy to a feminist Judaism, as she searches between the complex layers of family and family history that she inherited and inhabited. While the act of drawing came easily, the letting go of past failures, attachments and expectations did not. It is these that form the focus of Sarah’s astonishingly beautiful pages, as we bear witness to her making the world her own.