Burrow

By Marnie Galloway. Self Published. 

Softcover, 32 pages, B&W, 2016.

“My child, you are made of more pieces, more parts, than the world,” Isha, the main character and narrator of Marnie Galloway’s Burrow thinks to her baby.

We meet Isha as she is coming home to her small apartment with her infant, reflecting on how she got to this point in her life, and the bond she has with her child. A driven and passionate entomologist indicates the pregnancy was not planned, and we learn the relationship with the father was already strained at the moment of conception.

But Burrow is not about regret, rather about the complex, unbreakable, and cherished connection Isha feels with her baby, with her animal self, and the natural world she studies. The thoughts and ideas in this minicomic wander poetically as one moving through a forest. Isha is an animal nesting with her offspring in a man-made burrow. She is of the child and the child is of her. She is a tree, a forest, a collection of moments and memories, she is a single mother working and raising a child in the 21st century.

So much can be written about this deep, layered comic, but it would pale in comparison to Marnie’s thoughtful words and dreamy drawings.