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Feb 03, 2010

Chandra rated it:

One of those rare instances where the sequel is slightly better than its predecessor. Spiegelmen used the first installment to show us how his parents (Vladek and Anja) struggled to survive nazi occupation and evade capture. Their luck eventually runs out and that story ends at the gates of Auschwitz. We know, of course, that Anja and Vladek will survive, but we have no idea what horrors are in store for both of them - they are split up and have little idea about the others whereabouts. Quit More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 18, 2008

Eric rated it:

When I was a boy living in Germany, my parents and I visited Dachau concentration camp.

It was horrible. We saw the ovens, the gas chambers, the graveyards. The visit drove home to me the magnitude of the horror that had been perpetrated there, and the madness of the people who had orchestrated it.

Maus II is mostly concerned with Vladek's time in Auschwitz. It reminded me of all things I had seen when I was a boy, but it also added a new perspective. This graphic novel More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2009

Michael rated it:

I felt much stronger about this second installment of the Maus series, the heart-breaking story of a Holocaust survivor. While in the first book Vladek, the businessman/mouse trapped by history into the most disgusting human-killing machine ever created, is too much of a self-interested combiner, in this part Vladek becomes more than a stereotype. The Maus helps his friends and wife beyond reason and in spite of danger (contrasting the behavior described in Primo Levi's If This Is a Man), and be More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2008

Madeline rated it:

this was interesting to me because it wasn't just the story of a man who survived auschwitz. it was the story of son ("artie") telling the story based on a retelling from his father's memory, which does not always seem to serve correctly. it is subtitled "a survivor's tale" but this brings to mind the problem of who is the survivor? is it that the father is a survivor of auschwitz? or is it that the son is a survivor of his father? in the end the subtitle seems purely ir More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2008

Laurie rated it:

It's difficult to review this book when my comments are similar to what I said for Maus I. There is still a negative relationship between the son (author) and his father (Holocaust survivor). This made for some uneasy moments between the two, and still in this book I felt the son was selfish, though less so. The major difference between this and the first Maus is that this book looks back on the fathers' time in the concentration camps. There are amazing stories about how the father and his wife More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 21, 2007

Linda rated it:

I don't know why I read the second one even before I read the first one but it's still a very...intense book I guess. I found this book incredibly educational because it's like reading a story of someone that's really been through thick and thin in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. This book speaks of great survival and trying to help yourself out of a very helpless situation. It sort of plays a role in relating back to real life where humans would try and save themselves before even More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 08, 2008

Joy rated it:

I think everyone should read this book. It is a brilliant telling of a Jewish couple at Auschwitz. Where it differs is not only in its form of graphic novel but that it tells the true story of Speigelman's father in parallel form, going back and forth between his interviewing his father in the book in the 1970s/80s and his father's experience in Poland.
This book was the OneBook that all composition teachers taught to their freshman comp courses. They loved it. Don't let the format of More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 14, 2008

Kerry rated it:

This book handles a difficult subject of a son dealing with an aging parent. In this case, the parent is a concentration camp survivor. The son tries to record his father's account of those times. It is a creative approach to this particular subject, but I found it difficult to read, despite its graphic novel format. Maybe I missed out since I read II before Maus I. Good food for thought on our past shapes our future. Interesting themes on how parents can sometimes have a hard time communica More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 06, 2011

Wesley added it

Maus II by Art Spiegelman is a very rewarding read. After reading Maus you are left with a cliff hanger as the two main characters, Anja and Vladek arrive in Auschwitz. It's hard not to read the second installment of the series especially since you are left thinking about how impossible it is for the couple to escape such a hopeless situation yet at the same time you know they have to. Maus II focuses on the same themes as its predecessor did, the only difference being that in Maus II Anja an More...

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Aug 07, 2011

Katie rated it:

I read the two Maus books one after another on a rainy Saturday, and now that I'm done, I may need to rethink my 3-star rating of the first book. It's clear they can't be critiqued separately, and it was premature to comment on the first one before I read the second. (I imagine that's why Pantheon began offering the two together as a package deal.)

I really enjoyed the first book, Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, but book two is what makes the story unforgettable f More...

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Jun 27, 2011

Russell rated it:

There is absolutely nothing that can be contained in this review to sum up sheer brilliance which is found in the Maus books. Art Spiegelman uses a graphic novel format to tell his father's World War II/Holocaust story, replacing the characters with animals. Jews become mice, Nazis become cats, and so on. Under normal circumstances, this would be ridiculous. Animals performing human traits is something found in Saturday morning cartoons. However, the difference lies in Art's technique. This much More...

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May 14, 2011

Tim rated it:

Today I sat down to read Maus II and I didn't finish until I'd turned the last page. This is not difficult to do; it's only about 140 pages long and it's mostly pictures. Of course, once you begin reading this story, you simply have to keep going until you're done.

This is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, the author's father, and his experiences in Poland during World War II, from the city of Sosnowiec to Auschwitz, Birkenau, Dachau, and afterward. In parallel, we learn about the re More...

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Apr 17, 2011

Matt rated it:

This is not QUITE as good, in my opinion, as part one, but that is still saying a lot. In this second volume, I think we get more perspective into who Vladek Spiegelman really is. We see him as much more deeply flawed, and you see just how hard he had to finagle to keep himself and his wife, Anja, alive. The amount of shit (figurative and literal) the man had to wade through to get out of Nazi-occupied Europe is stunning, but Art Spiegelman is a good enough writer to refuse to lionize the her More...

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Mar 19, 2011

Christina rated it:

This tells the story of how the author deals with his father's death, depression, survivors guilt, success guilt, angry son's guilt and, most of all, being extremely famous for turning his father and fellow Holocaust survivors into cartoon characters that become world famous, even in a German edition. It is also the horrific story of life in Ausshwitz. The very things that got in the way of his father's happiness and relationship with his second wife and surviving son after the war are the thi More...

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Mar 15, 2011

Kristin rated it:

Part two of Maus was just as brilliant as part one. I liked that the reader "sees" more of Art Spiegelman's relationship with his father, and of the struggles he went through while writing this book. The scene between Art and his psychiatrist, Dr. Pavel, brought up interesting points, such as "Is there too much Holocaust literature?" "Is it possible to even understand the Holocaust if you didn't experience it personally?" "Why do we equate living with winning, More...

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Mar 08, 2011

Carmelo rated it:

Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began tells the survival story of a jew of Hitlers Europe. This book, moves us from the Barracks of Auschwitz to bungalows of the Catskills. It explains how Vladek survives agaisnt all odds through the death camps. This story focuses a lot in The holacaust. It also comes to how Spiegelman the author trys to come in terms with his father, Vladek. Vladek is a jew from poland, and Anja (his wife) and himself come to the holocaust. They are seperated More...

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Feb 19, 2011

Summer rated it:

A little slower than the first one, this was an amazing, heartbreaking tale. I feel like this is the only book I've read that is worthy of the Dave Eggers title, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." Why so good? Because it's so humble, so honest, and so incredibly full. You can see the emotions come through as if we're looking at the characters through glass, instead of words and pictures.

The son/artist comes across as selfish and harsh, yet loving in his own way. A More...

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Feb 10, 2011

Adrienne rated it:

All of those questions leftover from the first one--answered. The discussion of animal at the beginning is interesting, I like that Spiegelman was a bit reflective on his role as narrator, and of course the interaction between the father and son can never be summed up so quickly but was satisfyingly addressed.

Auschwitz is horrifying, again. It's not the first time, or the last time that I'll read about it (I plan to reread Maus, but definitely not right away). It never gets to be easie More...

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Dec 01, 2010

Paul rated it:

This book describes one of the darkest chapters of human history with an interesting twist to it; its characters are animals. Maus is an intense graphic novel that goes over the idea of the Holocaust and ties it in with the relationship of a man and his Jewish father that has survived the Holocaust. Maus, as its name suggests, has characters as mice for the Jews and other animals for other races and ethnicities of the characters. It provides insight on how Holocaust survivors are affect More...

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Jun 23, 2010

Ryan rated it:

Yes, Maus is a comic book, but it's not like any comic book you've probably ever read. The author's personal story is much more a central part of both books than I was expecting it to be, and I found that compelling. The premise is the story of his dad growing up in Poland and surviving the Holocaust all the way to the end of Auschwitz, only with the Jews being anthropomorphic mice and the Germans being anthropomorphic cats (Americans are dogs and the Poles are pigs). This device serves to prese More...

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May 10, 2010

Steven rated it:

The main appeal of this text, as it often is with graphic novels, is that it provides readers to read about a topic that is often not portrayed in such a genre. The use of drawings in Maus gives a very unique perspective to Art Speigelman's (or really, his father's) story. The book is interesting, as is to be expected from a biographical telling of the Holocaust, and is brutally honest, both in the telling of Spiegelman's father's story and in the retelling of Spiegelman's struggle in writing th More...

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Jan 06, 2010

Gabriel rated it:

In the space of a few years, Art Spiegelman is lauded with critical and commercial praise for the first Maus graphic novel, yet he has not even touched the Concentration Camp portion of his father's story. In fact, he has left off with a sad panel, Art walking away from his father murmuring "... murderer."

The guilt of gaining success over his arguments with his father leaves him in a darker place. While there is no section nearly as graphic as the pull-out "Prisone More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 05, 2009

Christina rated it:

Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, Maus tells the story of Spiegelman’s parents during the Holocaust from the perspective of a son watching his father with all the frustration that accompanies it. All people are presented as animals as a representation of their nationality (for example, all Jews are depicted as mice, hence the name Maus which is German for “mouse”), an ingenious way to clearly show who is who in this story.

And Here My Troubles Began is the continuation of the first v More...

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Mar 21, 2009

Derek rated it:

Wow. Both part I and II were very well done. Spiegelman's choice to use the medium of the comic strip to portray such a story is an interesting yet effective choice. For the most part, the cartoons "worked" for me. Even though drawn as different animals, in several of the panels Spiegleman gave the characters very human characteristics, and reading from panel to panel the mind connects what is happening between each image. There were some moments for me that the seriousness of his stor More...

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Jan 06, 2010

Kyla rated it:

Wow, an incredible sequel to the first Maus.

I wish that Maus had been my introduction to Holocast literature when I was in grade school--for many of the same reasons that I gave it five stars. The way that Art Spiegelman tells the story--of his father's survival of Holocaust, as well as the meaning of that survival--leaves room for us to admire Vladek, the author's father, for his intelligence and devotion to his wife during the war, as well as see him for the broken, miserly, and e More...

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Jun 08, 2009

Daniel rated it:

“Maus II” is less a sequel to Art Spiegelman's first graphic novel about his father's experiences in the Holocaust, and more a continuation of the saga. (The first book had left off just as Vladek arrived at Auschwitz after years moving from ghetto to ghetto, from hiding place to hiding place. The second book is focused on Vladek's experiences at Auschwitz, and on the time between the end of World War II and Vladek and his wife Anja's move to the United States.) “Maus II” also continues the stor More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2010

True rated it:

This book, a continuation of the graphic novel, Maus, and is just as good, only much more disturbing than the original. It is almost scary to read. In this sequel to Maus, Vladek Spiegelman talks about his experiencees in
one of the most famous concentration camps, Auschwitz. He talks about how he was separated from his wife, forced to do labor to great for a man. He
discusses how he survived in the camp through skill, connections to kapos, and luck.

I can connect this to a More...

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Mar 23, 2009

Sarah rated it:

The second volume in Spiegelman's memoir contains far more self-conscious meta moments than the first examination of his father's life during World War II. I realize this might have been innovative and startling at the time of the work's composition, but now I look to works like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, and see how the art of comics can be smoothly used to tell a personal story in a less mannered way. Or, at least, in a less nervous way.

The story told here is, by all means, incre More...

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May 29, 2011

Rita rated it:

A bunch of months ago, Alex brought home the first volume of Maus, which he was required to read for his English class. I started reading Maus and had a hard time giving the book back to Alex, but he threw a fit about needing to read it for school and I eventually gave in and let him take his book from me.

Then time passed, other things were read and written and Maus was not forgotten, but it did stay dormant in my memory. Finally, I got the book for my own use. The library did not ha More...

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Feb 19, 2009

Anna rated it:

(double review with In Cold Blood)

When I decided that one of my 2009 reading intentions would be to move through pivotal nonfiction--the sort of groundbreaking texts that incited change, demanded attention, and made the world in fact and on the page different--it was a thrill to think of how those guidelines still gave me an overwhelming number of books to choose from.

Reading In Cold Blood (1965) by Truman Capote and Art Spiegelman's two-part graphic novel, Maus (1986, 1 More...

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