The Mongoose

Portuguese cartoonist Mosi debuts in North America with an affecting character study of a teacher whose grief collides with the wildlife invading an unnamed coastal suburb in Portugal. Following a devastating personal loss, Júlia and her newly unemployed brother, Joel, live together in their grandmother’s beach house, beset by nagging restlessness. When Júlia finds her vegetable garden ravaged, she fixates on the notion that a mongoose is to blame. This theory is met with skepticism, but Júlia, emboldened by internet research, sees her preoccupation become entangled with intrusive thoughts and visions. Her overbearing mother visits and alternately berates her to “get up” and tells her that healing isn’t a straight line: “The obstacles we face aren’t walls, or barriers. They’re stairs.” Júlia leans into her work with her students, running, and schemes for capturing the elusive garden pest (poison, traps, a scarecrow), but can’t distract herself from pain: “I remember, and feel everything all at once.” Mosi subtly parallels Júlia’s self-protective detachment with muted, stripped-down cartooning, save for a few haunted flashback sequences with added gray wash, and the depictions suspend judgment on the existence of the mongoose. It’s a generous and perceptive portrait of displaced grief. (Oct.)