Ｏｎｌｉｎｅ Ｐｒｅｍｉｕｍ VVIP+++ Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Mariner Books; Reprint edition (June 5, 2007)

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is I first heard of Fun Home when I read an article about how it was on the summer reading list for incoming freshman at Duke University and a group of students were boycotting it. They said it was pornographic and that its homosexual themes violated their Christian moral beliefs. Learning a group is trying to ban or boycott a book is one sure way to get me interested in reading it.Fun Home is Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir of her life growing up. Fun home is what she and her brothers called the family-owned funeral home her dad ran. This was the first adult graphic novel I’ve read. (And by adult, I mean for grown-ups, NOT porn.) I was really surprised how drawn into it I was. I didn’t realize that characters could be so defined in the graphic format. I really felt for Alison, having to grow up with such distant, detached parents. Her pain and confusion over her father’s death jumps off the page.The only way that Alison and her father relate to one another is through a mutual love of books and reading. Fun Home is peppered with literary references and comparisons that went completely over my head. Once again I’m pulling the “I was an accounting major so I didn’t read any classics in college card”. If you have, you may enjoy the references and Alison’s book will have even more meaning for you. However, I still liked this book a lot anyway.There were a few nude drawings in this book, when Alison figures out she’s a lesbian and starts having relationships with women. However, Alison is a talented illustrator and they looked like works of art in my opinion. If the scenes had been described using words, they would have been much more graphic. I am applying Justice Potter Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” test of obscenity and this ain’t it.As far as the homosexual themes in the book goes, yes this is a memoir written by a lesbian about her relationship with her gay dad. It’s a gay book. But isn’t one of the great things about reading learning about people who are different than you? Reading helps one develop a deep sense of empathy. Maybe you might even learn that people you once thought were evil are not. Maybe that’s a scary thought for some people and they would rather live in their insulated bubbles. I’m glad I’m not one of those people. However, I should thank the students at Duke for alerting me to this book’s existence.Put Fun Home on your list of challenged books that must be read!

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is I don't typically read graphic novels, not because I dislike the genre or haven't read some brilliant graphic novels in the past. My predisposition is toward novels and history/non-fiction. In the case of "Fun Home", I listen to the podcast "Books on the Nightstand" and this was one of their recommendations. I've had great experiences when reading one of their recommendations and hadn't read a graphic novel in several years so decided to change things up."Fun Home" is an entertaining and poignant autobiography of Bechdel's childhood. Her family owns a funeral home in a small town so her father works as an English teacher, her mother an actress. They buy a charming fixer-upper which her father lovingly devotes much of his spare time to restoring to grandeur often enlisting Alison for assistance. Much more, this is Alison's story of growing up as she starts to realize she is a lesbian, her coming out as well as learning that her father was a "closeted" gay man. Her father dies after being hit by a car and Alison wonders whether this was an accident or suicide, unable to fully express himself and his true sexual orientation. It is also about the unspoken bonds between Alison and her dad after she tells her parents she is gay --- she can never quite come to ask him about his sexual orientation and he never directly broaches the subject with her before his death. The illustrations only serve to enhance the development of the Alison and her family and deepen the emotional engagement with their struggles. There are moments of sadness, but more moments of joy and discovery to be found in this exceptional autobiography.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is This was not at all what I was expecting.Something about those cutesy drawings gave me the pre read impression that this was going to be funny, quirky, maybe light hearted. No. An intense examination of the author’s own family, ugly gashes of violence, mental illness, a father leading a sordid double life, an actor mother who is remote and hard to know. There’s also the author’s discovery of her sexuality via a very intellectual route during college.Images stay with me of isolated siblings, alone but together in a museum-like Gothic Revival home where her father treated the antique furniture like his children and his children like castoff furniture. A crazy set of drawings where she kisses her father’s knuckles because she feels the need to show affection but has never been shown how. There are happy times of vacations and children at play but even those are odd because of the backdrop of the family’s funeral home.I thought the truest part of the book were the drawings of the author as a little girl compulsively counting and gesturing in public to ward off bad luck and sadly, scribbling symbols over her own journal words as if to scratch out herself in some kind of way.What will stay with me is the ever present longing to connect that’s prevalent throughout the book. I need to reread this one at some point because there’s too much for only one look.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is