Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

by Alison Bechdel

DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.

'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times

A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.

Interweaving between childhood memories, college life and present day, and through narrative that is equally heartbreaking and fiercely funny, Alison looks back on her complex relationship with her father and finds they had more in common than she ever knew.


'A groundbreaking masterpiece' The Independent

'A finely woven blend of yearning and euphoric fantasy' Evening Standard

**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

• ISBN10: 0224080512
• ISBN13: 9780224080514
• Publish Date: 14 September 2006 (first published 1 June 2006)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[clementine]

Alison Bechdel expertly weaves together her childhood and fraught relationship with her father with her budding lesbian feminist identity in this graphic memoir. Her writing is razor-sharp and poignant. "Tragicomic" is the best word to describe this book: Bechdel infuses the story of her father's suicide with acerbic wit and evocative imagery. A must-read.

[brokentune]

The latest foray into the realms of the graphic novel led me to Bechdel's autobiographical works about her parents.

Fun Home, the earlier of the two books, describes her growing up and relationship with her father. Without going into much of the plot and issues, Fun Home offers an exploration into Bechdel's coming to terms with outgrowing the illusions of her childhood whilst exploring works of literature. In a way, one of the aspects that have kept me hooked to the story is Bechdel's connection of her own story and that of the people around her to the plots and characters of literary works and authors.

Are You My Mother? tries to follow up Fun Home with an investigation of Bechdel's relationship with her mother. Although following a similar structure as Fun Home, Are You My Mother? focuses on the analysis of Bechdel's relationship issues from a psychological perspective. Filled with anxiety and compulsion, her introspection at times is little more than a frustrating read, probably because I can't really relate to a lot of the neurosis she seems to have suffered through. The literary aspect of Fun Home is still present in this sequel but it is not at strong as in Fun Home.

So, 3* for Are You My Mother and 4* for Fun Home.

The drawings and artwork in in both are excellent.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic memoir that chronicles the childhood of Alison Bechdel, growing up in rural Pennsylvania and her complicated relationships with her father. Alison Bechdel is best known as the person whom the Bechdel test was named after. The Bechdel test is a simple method that can be used to determine if a work of fiction (or movie) is gender biased. To pass the Bechdel test there must be at least two women, who talk to each other about something other than men.

Fun Home is a non-linear account of Alison Bechdel’s childhood with a strong focus on her relationship with her father. A complex relationship, Bruce Bechdel was a funeral director and a high school English teacher. He was obsessed with restoring the family’s Victorian home and often viewed his children as free labour. He was often cold and prone to abusive rage, Alison’s relationship with her father was a difficult one. At 44, he stepped in front of a truck and was killed; while never confirmed, Alison believed her father completed suicide.

After his death, Alison discovered her father was a closeted homosexual who had sexual relationships with his students and babysitters. Alongside this, Fun Home follows Alison’s own struggle with her sexual identity,coming out to her parents before actually knowing her sexual preferences. The graphic novel centres on Alison Bechdel’s thoughts about whether her decision to come out triggered her father’s suicide.

This is a fascinating insight into the mind of Alison Bechdel, not only as a memoir but the struggles that she faced while trying to understand her own identity. Drawn in a gothic style, Bechdel uses blue shading to give her art a dramatic feel. She even uses childhood diary entries to help capture the mood and feel. The dramatic artwork and emotionally charged writing complement each other and really help drive the story.

While I enjoyed Blue is the Warmest Color more as a coming of age story and a struggle with sexuality, Fun Home still remains a wonderful graphic memoir than really packs an emotional punch. Graphic novels and memoirs often get pushed aside and disregarded as works of literature but every now and then comes a work of art that proves this idea wrong. It happened with Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi; but Fun Home seemed to be the most common example that comics (I use the term comic as a catch all for graphic novels and memoirs as well) need to be taken more seriously.

I have been reading more comics of late and I have been impressed with the way art and writing can work together to tell a story. I like these graphic novels/memoirs that capture raw emotion, in the writing or art and I am trying to find more like this. While comics by Marvel and DC are a lot of fun, there are so many other works out there that explores this art from an interesting and new way. I really enjoyed Fun Home, it wasn’t a comfortable read but the experience was well worth the effort.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2015/01/02/fun-home-by-alison-bechdel/