A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form.
Alison Bechdel is a hero, and works like Fun Home should be made widely available to anybody who wants to read it because exposure to alternative gender roles and orientations can be literally life-saving. The same reasons that Fun Home is on the Banned Books list are the same reasons we need to make it accessible. If you haven't read it yet, I couldn't recommend it enough. Read Full Review
Initially, what impressed me the most about this story is the author's complete openness about not only her life but her mother's and late father's lives. It can't be easy to expose oneself to public scrutiny, but exposing someone else - especially when the revelations are in part scandalous in nature - takes real courage and conviction. But ultimately, it's the sad story of Bruce Bechdel, living a life he felt he didn't choose but ultimately had to follow, that's the most compelling aspect of the book. At times, he's something of a villain, and at others, he's a victim of the repressed social order of his time. He's both a puzzling oddity and impressive intellect, something of a Renaissance man lost in the mirage of the American Dream. Read Full Review
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