...,the first installment in the book series A Healthy Fear (Of Everything), quickly asserts itself as an absurdist family album. Opening with found text advertising the services of a studio There is nothing so friendly as a fine portrait!, Martin establishes elements of the complex frame narrative in her multi-track story-telling.
With a gentleness she introduces her Grandmother who cared for her from infancy. What follows is in stark contrast. Her Grandfather, whose portrait is overlaid by the shadow of tree branches, is captioned by the disturbing proclamation My Grandfather was a psychopath. Bare prose accompany images layered with medical texts, diaries and documents. Martin feels the need to provide evidence for her statements, which alone might seem incredible. With an unusual mix of equal parts clinical detachment, condemnation, humor and compassion she recounts incidents of abuse and crisis.
For Martin there is no illusion of good and evil, and she herself seems to fully inhabit a spectrum of grey.
Inspecting the branches of her tree, Martin at last expresses her fear that she is somehow tainted by familial bonds, the apple of your eye will be rotten to the core. While the tone of this prediction is at first grim, the following page--an empty order form, changes the intonation entirely.

It becomes clear that Martin always laughs last.