Review: Single Mothering by Anna Härmälä.
Nobrow, April 2024. 168 p. ill. ISBN 9781913123222 (softcover), $20.99
Reviewed July 2025
By: Sarah Scarr, Arts Collections Curator, Virginia Commonwealth University
In Single Mothering, Anna Härmälä’s first graphic novel, Mia has been dumped and left to care for a new baby on her own in Helsinki. Her story begins in a rage-filled postpartum depression, adding pumping and diapers to a full plate of adulting — and grieving — on zero sleep. This is Scandinavia, therefore many pressures associated with early childcare are magically absent (and set against a backdrop of functional architecture): there’s no hunt for childcare and no struggle for basic necessities. In fact it is just the opposite. Mia is financially empowered to buy an apartment, doesn’t work, and like all mothers in Finland, received a government-provided box of essentials that doubles as a crib. These privileges, however, don’t diminish her struggles; there is no escaping the clash between societal expectations and the lives of real parents. With the aid of a friend, Mia finds her way to mental health services as a last resort where she is welcomed as an emergency case. Along her journey, friends, passersby, and playgroups alternate between support systems and examples of impossibly perfect parenting and hetero-relationships.
Härmälä presents Mia’s story as a traditional arc of overcoming and growth, interspersed with visually dynamic vignettes that provide social commentary on the pressures facing single mothers. In one instance, Härmälä pits Mia against the trope of the natural mother in a scene from a nature documentary where mothers enter cocoons only to emerge as 1950’s housewives cradling babies. Mia refuses to emerge. Christian European demonization of single women is also a target; a christening becomes a funeral, and, for a moment, Mia becomes a witch chased from a medieval European town.
In Single Mothering, the mental health struggles are poetic, but not dark; the tone is lighthearted and witty. Each scene is anchored by a strong, but muted, background color— pinks! greens! oranges!— which provides a hopeful contrast to Mia’s emotional states. Her expertly simplified, emotive facial expressions outlined in black tell their own story. This book is well-suited for adult graphic novel collections in public and academic libraries.
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