In which the reader gets on the couch with Alison Bechdel.

I was dazzled by Ms B's 'Fun Home' when it came out in (gosh) 2006. The graphic novel as confessional-style memoir is no new thing, of course: one thinks of 'Maus', 'American Splendor', Joe Matt et al. What Bechdel brought to the genre was, I thought, a unique style of rhetorical detective work, blending time-jumping shards of memory with entertaining anecdotes, intimate questions, a sense of expiation and detached commentary. If anything, it had more in common with JR Ackerley's 1960s prose memoir 'My Father And Myself' than with those aforementioned comic books. Ackerley used his book as a writing out of his feelings about both his father's double life (he kept a hidden second family going alongside his legitimate one), and his own double life as a gay man, at a time when homosexual acts were criminalized. Similarly, in 'Fun Home' Bechdel compares and contrasts her father's secret bisexuality with her own coming out as a lesbian.

It wasn't just me who loved the book: the Wikipedia page for 'Fun Home' lists its umpteen awards, its bestseller status, and its place in 2012 as a bona fide modern classic, worthy of serious academic study - it's also a set text for the English Literature degree I'm taking right now (at Birkbeck, University Of London).

So 'Are You My Mother' is, on one level, 'Fun Home 2: This Time It's Even More Personal'. It covers the most obvious subject to write about next: Bechdel's mother. This time, though, the project is far more complicated, because Ma Bechdel is still around, still a part of Alison's life, and still uneasy about being written about at all. In this new book, she is shown disapproving of 'Fun Home', just as she disapproved of 'Dykes To Watch Out For', though she ultimately (if mutely) respects her daughter's success, being a writer-manque herself. The goal of the book, therefore, is compromised. So instead, Ms B tells the story of FAILING to properly write her mother's story, making it more of a kind of 'Tristam Shandy' meta-book. We even see her discussing how 'marketable' the book might be, during the copy-editing process. It's also about her own self-knowledge progress as an adult - the most recent event chronologically shows her feelings about reaching the menopause.

So it's a book about Bechdel writing, or failing to write, as much as it is about her connecting with her mother, or failing to connect. There's lots of depictions of her dreams, references to Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and A Room Of One's Own, and wonderful scenes of her mother singing in the Sondheim musical A Little Night Music. I like how Ma Bechdel has 'claimed' Sylvia Plath, while Alison has custody of Woolf - this rather reminded me of how my own brother and I divided up favourite bands while growing up. Funny how territorial some relatives can get about culture.

I also found it particularly interesting that instead of drawing the book page by page, Bechdel scripts the whole thing first, seeing if it works as a long form text, before she starts on the artwork.

Warning: 'Are You My Mother' contains a LOT of psychoanalysis - perhaps too much. Bechdel's search for a satisfying mother-daughter connection leads to her reading the works of Freud, Alice Miller and (especially) Donald Winnicott. This is my sole criticism of the book - Bechdel inflicts on the reader panel after panel of highlighted words from rather dry books by other people (Woolf excepted). When she actually illustrates the ideas, however, eg drawing Winnicott himself, depicting him playing with troubled children or passing Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square, the ideas feel much more justified.

Seeing Virginia Woolf (plus dog) drawn in a Bechdel style was my personal highlight. I'd just been reading the Alexandra Harris biography of VW, and some of the quotes that Harris selects are also repeated by Bechdel - which was a very unexpected yet very Bechdel coincidence.