“Good thing I recently accepted the dry martini as my personal savior.”
 
That is Miriam Katin’s reaction to hearing the news that her son was about to settle permanently in Berlin, Germany. Germany --- no matter how hard she tries, Katin can’t overcome the intense feelings the very word evokes in her. Her son asks her to complete a form, which will convey citizenship in the EU upon him based on the fact that his mother was born in Hungary. But after he sees what it is doing to her --- how the very presence of the form is hurting her --- he pulls it away. “I threw it into the trash,” he notes. “I can’t ask this. I see what it’s doing to you.” It’s one of the multitude of beautiful moments throughout Letting It Go, a graphic memoir so tinged with humor and sorrow that it can break the heart and then heal it within the space of just a few panels.
 
“The building we live in is breathing sorrow,” Katin writes at one point. As her comic character gazes on a collection of furniture, art, and more thrown on the street outside her apartment building, she remarks, “Somebody else died.” The panel caption simply states: “Here is the detritus of lives long past usefulness.”
 
That is only scratching the surface in terms of the layers of privacy and intimacy peeled back by Katin as she relates the story of visiting Berlin in Letting It Go. Katin is bold, fearless, and never one to shy away from cold, hard truth, particularly when it can reveal the elements of human experience. Her relentless honestly makes Letting It Go compelling and nearly impossible to put down. Just when you think you know how Katin is going to relate to her surroundings --- and the history that brought her to them --- she surprises you, and you laugh. Or wince.
 
Katin’s artwork is incredible as well, depicting color and movement and style with effortless grace. Each page is a wonderful joy to behold.