Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Aug 22, 2018 Graceann rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoir, graphic

I had heard a lot of praise for this graphic memoir, and then the musical based on it arrived here in London, so I thought I should catch up with the bandwagon, late as I am. What I found surprised me in several ways.

This memoir concentrates on Alison Bechdel's complicated relationship with her father, the tense dynamics in her family as a whole, the strangeness of the family business (a funeral home) and young Bechdel's dawning realizations about herself. It was rather astounding to me that I I had heard a lot of praise for this graphic memoir, and then the musical based on it arrived here in London, so I thought I should catch up with the bandwagon, late as I am. What I found surprised me in several ways.

This memoir concentrates on Alison Bechdel's complicated relationship with her father, the tense dynamics in her family as a whole, the strangeness of the family business (a funeral home) and young Bechdel's dawning realizations about herself. It was rather astounding to me that I don't have much in common with Bechdel at all, yet I could relate so well, especially with regard to the father-daughter difficulties. While neither my father nor I could be referred to as anything remotely "intellectual" (the strongest bond the two find is through literature, and Bechdel often alludes to classical narratives (which I had a very hard time following) to try to explain her father's possible motivations), and my father certainly didn't share Dad Bechdel's characteristics, I completely understood the wish for a closer connection, and the frustration of finding it out of one's grasp 99% of the time.

I'm giving nothing away here, I promise - within the first three panels, you will know what Bechdel has in mind for the direction of Fun Home - the surprise is in the route she chooses to take in guiding the reader there, and how she makes it feel as if she's discovering it along with us.

The artwork is crisp and evocative, and very witty, and the text is just illuminating enough to answer lingering questions without beating us over the head with the answers. For instance, the Bechdel children are taken to stay with another couple the family knows while something is going on at their own home. There is a painting on the wall that Alison recreates and explains, and I thought her reference of it was cleverly handled, in a sort of "adults think kids don't notice or remember these things" kind of way.

Fun Home is definitely not for kids, if anyone was wondering. Nudity and swearing are present, and complex situations are discussed. My kid years are far, FAR in my past, and there were references that I didn't understand. It is, however, for anyone who, like me, has had an "interesting" family situation and has spent their adult life thinking and/or saying "what the heck were those first 20 or so years of my life *about?!*" I know that I'll be thinking about it and processing what I've read, and how it's helped me reframe those years in my own mind, for quite a while.

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Aug 04, 2017 Marcella rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-50-book-challenge, art-books, graphic-novels-comics

Deeply personal. Emotionally harrowing. Beautiful art and prose. I came to read this novel after listening to the musical version of Fun Home, and they're both so excellent in their own ways of telling one family's story. ...more

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Oct 14, 2018 Debbie rated it liked it · review of another edition

I would put this at 3.5 stars if I could.

I loved the artwork in this volume, which I read on the Kindle app on my husband's iPad. (The visuals will not display on my Kindle Paperwhite.) The one-color palette - besides black and white, of course - was used to really accentuate the people and settings in the panels, and I liked how the greenish color would even go lighter and darker, as needed. On some pages, figuring out which panel to read in which order was difficult, but then I discovered tha ...more

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