World Famous Comics: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
By: Alison Bechdel Publisher: Mariner Books Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Mariner Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 232 Publication Date: June 05, 2007
In this groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
special people are everywhere if you look for them and have an eye for them An elegantly ordered, deeply thought out memoir of a father by his daughter.
The author's father - a high school English teacher in a small town, a part time funeral home embalmer, a home body, a Do It Yourself home improver, outwardly so utterly ordinary - had a secret sexual life.
The author draws parallels between her journey and ultimate escape from the small town traditions and thinking, and her father's growing, somewhat voluntary entrapment and suffocation therein.
The father taught the author to be an independent thinker and love literature and history and gave her her intellectual and spiritual wings. Yet he also tried to impose his vision of femininity on her - e.g., forcing a barrette on the hair of his tomboyish resentful daughter.
The father had some ingrained notion of staying married to a woman, carrying on the family's small town funeral home business, living in his ancestral home town though he also loved visiting the gay neighborhoods of New York City on certain weekends. He was caught between half hearted adherence to social norms and his internal deep seated insuppresible yearnings.
This memoir is not so much about sexual orientation, but about peoples' true natures, and how only so much of it can be healthily moulded into normal forms, and much of it can be suppressed, but at high mental cost.
If you enjoyed this book, I recommend the author's Dykes to Watch Out For series, especially the later volumes - it's about more than lesbians, but about humanity and the importance of individuality and being true to ourselves.
What an unexpected treat I've never read a graphic novel before so wasn't sure what to expect. I was blown away and am telling all my friends, 'you must read/view this book!'
Dykes that reveal themselves I didn't expect much from this book, cartoons and all. But what I got was a pleasant surprise. It was entertaining, informative and fun. Our writer begins at a very early age in her life and takes us through a journey of her own sexual awakening and discovery, to the discovery that her father was gay and often with men, even while married to her mother. She gives her feelings and thoughts about being raised by a man who bordered obsessive and could not, or would not, control his predilection for young men. I loved how she put the story together. It is a short read but well worth the price. And the graphics are fun. If you enjoy "Dykes to watch out for"....you will love this.
good memoir in the wrong format for this reader This is a good graphic memoir I probably would have loved if it were not in the graphic novel format. Alison Bechdel is a skilled storyteller and graphic artist. I don't know if she's a skilled writer because she relies on her drawings to evoke the Victorian monstrosity of her childhood home and the girly dresses she abhorred. The words she uses are effective in moving the story along emotionally and temporally but without the drawings, the story is half told. I almost feel as though this should be reviewed as a film instead of a book.
Bechdel does a good job depicting a family caught up in the social upheavals of the 60s and 70s. She is honest about herself and the conflicts between childhood memory and adult perspective and understanding. I like her honesty. The way literature and popular culture are woven into the story feels natural and essential.
One example of when I would have preferred a more traditional narrative was description of Greenwich Village at that point in history. I'm from New York and spent a lot of time in the Village during that period. I didn't need to know any more about the significance of Christopher Street or the post-Stonewall atmosphere of NYC. Maybe that is a weakness of the book: is the audience too narrow? I guess I'll know the answer to that question when my well-read but decidedly non-urban, mostly straight book group discusses this next week. (They like Persepolis, but I had the same misgivings with that book.) I suspect I am just the wrong audience for graphic novels. If I run across any essays or other writings by Alison Bechdel, I will be happy to read them. And when they make the movie, I'll buy a ticket.
Ultimately, this read was pleasant but frustrating. If any graphic novel could have satisfied me, Fun Home would have - and didn't. It isn't Bechdel's fault. She's written a good graphic memoir that is, for me, lacking the emotional depth of a good memoir
Suprisingly good Didn't think I would like the graphic novel genre, but I really did. Well written and well illustrated...plus, a quick read.
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