Alison Bechdel

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/spent-a-comic-novel-by-alison-bechdel/

Alison Bechdel, who we have met in three previous books, is now running a sanctuary for abandoned goats in rural Vermont, while her partner Holly is becoming an internet influencer thanks to her use of power tools for carpentry. Meanwhile Alison’s successful first memoir, Death and Taxidermy, has become a hit TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as her father, but veering further and further from Alison’s own lived show more experience. Her old friends live down the road and are going through their own emotional transformations – there’s a fair bit of over-sixties sex in this book – and incidentally the world is going to hell, with Trumpists threatening civil war, climate catastrophe looming, and incidentally Alison’s MAGA sister writing her own autobiography to set the story straight.

I loved this, and laughed out loud several times on the London Underground and the train while reading it, much to the dismay of fellow passengers. The funniest scene perhaps is when the goats… no, I won’t spoil it for you. There are some serious points as well, both about the state of the world and the limited effect that one individual can have (which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try), and also about Life as Art and Art as Life. Recommended. show less

Alison Bechdel has always been fascinated with various forms of exercise and fitness. She recounts her journey from a child learning to ski, through phases of running, cycling, yoga, and more. Throughout, however, she's also trying to come to terms with her place in the world and her own mortality, since her body can't always do what she asks of it.

Interspersed in her personal account, Alison includes Buddhist teaching and Transcendalists, Jack Kerouac, Margaret Fuller, and more. It's about show more exercise, yes, but it's really about finding herself, using exercise to deal with difficult things and anxiety, but also how nature was an integral part of her well-being. A thoughtful graphic novel memoir I'd recommend widely. show less

This book is an odd one! It combines autobiographical material (Alison, her partner, and various Vermont residents including Becca Balint and Bill McKibben are featured) with fictional elements (there is a TV show based on Death & Taxidermy... ahem, Fun Home, that sounds like an unholy blend of several high profile TV shows, including Six Feet Under, Breaking Bad, and... Game of Thrones??) and a boatload of characters from Bechdel's long-running comic Dykes to Watch Out For. There's also a show more structural element related to Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", which seems a bit half-hearted and eventually gives way to the anarchist theories of Kropotkin, anyway. That might make it sound like a mess, but... it is HILARIOUS and big-hearted, and I loved it! It seems like she's embracing a life of small-town connectedness and counter-cultural authenticity... which we can do with no contradiction here in northwest Vermont. I came away thinking that if we can focus on community as our bedrock, maybe we can get through these increasingly crazy times. show less

A great graphic novel is that rare thing where not only does the story itself have to be well-told and compelling, but the illustrations themselves must accompany, complement, and provide emphasis and context, allowing the words themselves to be elevated above their fixed static meanings. All this is to say that I'm extremely glad to have experienced this pioneering work and my expectations from the existing praises were well met.

This is one of those books where it feels weird to say that I show more enjoyed or liked it (it's someone's life!) Reading this was a tense affair, fraught yet also humbling to witness Bechdel's ability to be open and raw with the reader. She handles the tension expertly, winding up a storyline and letting loose a little surprise every so often before carrying on, leaving me to reread and wonder if I missed something, before picking up that thread some pages onwards. She quietly lit and fired the cannon at the start and just continued to revisit her life over and over from different perspectives and anecdotes. This is storytelling done as a 3D jigsaw puzzle while on a high-wire.

Aside: Bechdel really tricked me with that title. I had zero idea about the book itself except the title and that people called it a memoir, and she really fooled me on both counts. show less