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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

by Alison Bechdel

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7,6063531,070 (4.17)595
This book takes its place alongside the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr. It's a father-daughter tale perfectly suited to the graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian house, 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 male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned 'fun home, ' as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.--From publisher description.… (more)
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» See also 595 mentions

English (341)  Danish (3)  French (3)  Swedish (2)  Catalan (1)  German (1)  Finnish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (353)
Showing 1-5 of 341 (next | show all)
I had been reluctant to dive in based on how highly praised this has been in some quarters, and that the first [x] number of pages seemed fine but hardly world-shattering. But then Bechdel's points of empathy and overlap with her father increasingly converge and the narrative comes together with a nearly audible emotionally satisfying snap.

One of the most difficult things to do in any form is to make narrative seem casual to the point of aimlessness, but then have everything resolve so tightly that it's impossible to believe it ever felt airy. Fun Home works as a de- and re-construction of memory as it does coming-of-age (and coming out) story, and the artistry of the drawings, not perfectly realistic, but with more precision than in an average graphic novel, heightens the mimetic effect.

Just really brilliant, and that is not a phrase I toss around lightly. ( )
  danieljensen | May 25, 2023 |
I tried and I tried to make myself like this. But it was SO complicated. So many literary citations that made me feel utterly dumb. Oh well, I guess I better stick to simpler stuff.
Great art tho! ( )
  Valebaby | May 10, 2023 |
You can read this over and over again and get something new out of it every time. And I'm sure I'm missing loads. A real work of literature, in comic form. Fuckin' genius. ( )
  caedocyon | May 8, 2023 |
I finally read this after years of everyone yelling at me because even my damn therapist said I should. (Un?)Fortunately related to the weird closeted gay dad thing, which was comforting to know existed in some sort of media and am really here for more of, but could not relate to the majority for obvious reasons of not being a lesbian or attracted primarily to women for the time being. It's my own ill but I genuinely enjoyed and would recommend it. ( )
  Eavans | Feb 17, 2023 |
Warning for young or religious readers: this is pornographic (i.e. it portrays sex and nudity). That said, it also has a lot to say about about death and relationships that is interesting and worth reading. ( )
  JMigotsky | Jan 27, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 341 (next | show all)
Bechdel’s style is straightforward. Her detailed drawings strive to present what she remembers accurately and with detail. The book is black-and-white with a blue-grey watercolor wash that provides depth and adds to the feeling of memory.
 
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Epigraph
Dedication
For Mom, Christian, and John.

We did have a lot of fun,
in spite of everything.
First words
Like many fathers, mine could occasionally be prevailed on for a spot of "airplane."
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (4)

This book takes its place alongside the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr. It's a father-daughter tale perfectly suited to the graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian house, 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 male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned 'fun home, ' as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.--From publisher description.

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Book description
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.

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.
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