Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Love graphics and love memoirs, Alison Bechel had a terrible childhood. Her father was the third generation in the funeral business. It is creepy enough to be around funeral decor and have t0 be very solemn always in public but but little kids having to prep the viewing room with the folding chairs and always be immaculare is a fun part of childhood. I had the experience of working in the upstair apartment of a funeral home temporarily. My first husband's law practice was there. The wallpaper and carpet were funeral home style. The worst part was that I know where the caskets had been. Alison's farher was eccentric and a perfectionist, not one to give warm hugs. He had affairs with the men he hired and I will never forgive for demanding help with the embalming of a client. Not much help but just being there with a naked corpse is not a good experience for any child. This book is one of deeply troubled childhood. The graphics and writing was top notch and now I want to read her book about her mother.

Those foolish incoming Duke University freshmen who won't read this book need a good lesson in humility and the value of literature, which they would learn if they read this magnificent book. And I thank them for calling this book to my attention. Not only is it intelligent, layered, original, and astonishing, it's one of the best books I've read in a long time that uses other literary works to emphasize and humanize its story. Ms. Bechdel is sly, funny, and more self-aware than most writers I can think of, and Fun Home is a triumph. I only wish I had read it when it came out so I could have been recommending it to everyone all of these years. I can't remember the last memoir I enjoyed this much (maybe "Liar's Club" by Mary Carr) that contained so much wisdom and humor. Yes, it has much frank discussion of homosexuality but it is hardly gratuitous when it is fundamental to the natures of the two main characters--the narrator and her father, their destinies beautifully interwoven with the themes of books they read in the course of this graphic "tragicomic." Those who look down on graphic novels as less than "literature" would do well to withhold judgment until they have read "Fun Home." It is a great--an important--book--in any genre.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is a stellar example of a quintessential memoir. Set in rural Pennsylvania, Bechdel centers her memoir around her relationship with her closeted father, Bruce and how his hidden double-life was inextricably intertwined with hers. As an autobiography, Alison Bechdel admits more about her family life than expected, rather than "setting the record straight" about her role as the only daughter in her family. This graphic novel is an autobiography very unlike its peers. Fun Home not only tells the reader eloquently about the protagonist's life in detail, it also shocks the reader multiple times by its brutal honesty. Few would be willing to admit as many hidden family secrets as the protagonist in this autobiography, Alison. Not only does the content satisfy the reader immensely, the art is breathtaking in its meticulous aspects. Her language and drawings are very sensitive to every part of his physical experience and her phases in and out of self-consciousness; Bechdel continuously delves into her past, plunging the reader into its depths every time. The memoir is not chronological, yet it focuses on each major incident by revisiting the topics from different angles. Bechdel's openness about her family's story along with her personal coming of age is what distinguishes her work from other novels I have read. I have never been taken aback so many times as with this novel. Bechdel interprets and reinterprets her relationship with her father and in turn, his relationship with their whole family, in terms of biblical, literary, and mythical stories. While this novel is certainly unconventional, it has a particularly shining moral. One of the most defining thoughts to be received from this memoir is the fact that no family is perfect, and that understanding our own families can take an emotional toll on all of our hearts.

My life doesn't easily afford going out and browsing books at actual bookstores. I can get get out and about if I'm determined, but I seldom have enough energy to be determined. This means when I want to sample someone's creative work to see if it's something I would actually read or watch all the way through, I have to use ... other means. Let's just pretend I borrowed it from the library. When I sampled this book, it hooked me so well that I couldn't stop at sampling it. I read the whole thing in one sitting, without even thinking to pause to find out where I could pay her properly for a higher-quality copy that I'd probably appreciate more, because that would take me out of the moment and I didn't want that. Having finished it, I've come here and made sure Ms. Bechdel gets her due, because she deserves it. People more eloquent than I have talked about its subject matter and why it's good, but if its description hasn't already turned you off, based on your moral principles, then you're probably compatible with this autobio-graphical-novel and I think you should just pick it up and get started. I'm certain you'll enjoy it too. TL;DR: Great book; buy it.

This probing journey into the life of the author's father, poses two dramatic questions: was he gay? and did he commit suicide? It also is a loving portrait of a man, from the viewpoint of his daughter. Ms. Bechdel is fortunate to have the ability to see her parents as people outside of the role models that most of us develop. Most parents remain Mom and Dad and hold a power over our lives that continually keep the average son or daughter in a subserviant role. It is often rare when one gets to know one's parents as individuals, as friends; as fellow traveller's in the journey of life. This graphic study, so beautifully executed, takes us into his personal life, not just with his daughter. It's a compelling, sympathetic journey, that brings the reader along, creating images to ponder, as artful and deep as the dialogue. A truly beautiful book, not to be dismissed as a mere comic, but right up there along comedy's sister, tragedy.

It is difficult to read Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir and not have my impressions be impacted by the huge expectations raised by the MacArthur Fellowship, the legion of five-star reviews and the Tony for the musical adaptation, which I have yet to see. Having grown up on radical cartoonists like R. Crumb, I found Bechdel's graphic novel oddly subdued. The images are often skim-able and rarely arresting. There is a good core narrative: Dad was a closeted perpetual renovator while the author herself comes out as a freshman in college. A natural structure, the stuff of pretty typical memoir. What slowed me down a bit was that the literary references that Bechdel uses as touchstones -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Joyce -- seem musty and an ill-fit for the form (even if they may be historically true). They seem too canonical, even if I appreciate the authors themselves. Even more Nin and Collette would have been welcome, although they, too, are a little fusty, as would have been Henry Miller. What I circle back to is my desire to be deeply moved because it is memoir, and I would say that I was only mildly interested Bechdel, to her credit, is lucid and fluid but I, personally, did not see enough blood on the page. Still, it was enough to send me waddling toward "Are You My Mother?" in which she addresses the problem of many memoirists: how do you maintain a relationships with the parent whose lockbox secret you have revealed? Maybe she'll have an answer for my own relationships with my mother and siblings.

Love it

I've never read a graphic novel and was surprised by how good this is. I can see why it's won so many awards. Not for the homophobic.