I finally read Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
after hearing nothing but praise of it for the past year. And the praise is deserved, because this graphic memoir is Awesome with a capital A. Alison Bechdel's story is one of growing up with a family who doesn't always appear to be what they are. Her clean home was full of antiques her father collected that made it appear to be a different time period inside than it was outside the door. Her parents were married by rarely spoke to each other, her mother spent most of her time acting in plays, and her father spent most of his time entertaining adolescent boys. Alison finds out about her father's homosexuality when she comes out in college as a lesbian. This creates a bond between them that is strange and hard to explain, but Bechdel succeeds in creating a story that helps make you sympathize with everyone in it, even with their flaws.
The drawing is fairly simple but as an almost photographic quality to it. The way she places objects and fills rooms with so many specific pieces gives it a snapshot feel. I love how she had boxes to point out things in the photos you might not see, or to give you a better understanding of what was going on. I also like how the story is Bechdel's own memoir, her internal story, but sometimes the dialogue contradicts that story. It's just another way of showing how unreliable memory can be, or how my memory is different from your memory. Bechdel is also completely honest about herself. She admits that she wanted to get a rise out of her parents by coming out as a lesbian, and that she was disappointed when she didn't even though her primary concern should have been her deeply depressed mother.
This is a great graphic memoir that deals with a difficult and confusing subject. It's different from other coming out stories because it not only deals with Bechdel's own discovery of her sexuality but with the discovery of her father's hidden sexuality. It's also a story of how easy it is to not know the members of your own family. At one point in the story Bechdel illustrates how everyone in the house was in a different room doing a completely different thing. I know my family does this all the time, and I'm sure most families do. Does anyone care what is going on outside of their room? Probably not.
I give this graphic memoir an A.
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