Fun Home

I live an hour away from Beech Creek, Alison Bechdel's tiny hometown and the setting for much of her graphic memoir Fun Home. I've always found the area oppressive: dark, looming mountains casting perpetual shadows on impoverished, dying valley towns. But after reading Fun Home, I revisited Beech Creek, to see Bechdel's childhood home and the grave of her father Bruce, and to remind myself of how cruelly ironic life can be. Bruce Bechdel, a man who loves literature (in his early days he identified with F. Scott Fitzgerald; in his final days he reads Proust), an aesthete with a taste for the baroque detail of the Victorian era, and a creative and versatile designer of interior and exterior landscapes, is born and lives in rural central Pennsylvania, running the family funeral home and teaching at the local high school. He never quite fits in. Always sun-tanned and exquisitely dressed (no plaid hunter's shirts or chewing tobacco for him), persnickety and a bit prissy, but at the same time speaking with a back-country twang, Bruce seems uncannily out of place in Beech Creek. And he's a closeted gay man, who has occasional affairs on the side and otherwise sublimates his repressed sexuality by obsessively restoring the Victorian-era house in which Alison grew up. The tension of his closeted life makes him aloof, prone to violent temper tantrums, controlling, and sometimes cruel to both wife and children. Alison's Bechdel's memoir of him, and the way in which her own identity both became the inverse of his and yet in many respects parallels his, is a sophisticated narrative that underscores just how complex personal identity is. Alison is who she is, just as her father was who he was, because of the convergence of Beech Creek, sexuality, alienation, fun, repression, the need to be creative, the yearning for affection, the factuality of history and the re-creation of memory. There's no formulaic happy ending here, no artificial structuring to make more sense of the relationship between herself and her father than there really was. Instead, what the reader is offered is a profound, sensitive, bittersweet effort to explore memory in search of identity--an effort which throughout is punctuated by Bechdel's references to both Proust and James Joyce--and an appreciation for the ironies of fate which make us who we become. Other reviewers have mentioned that they read the memoir at one setting. I found it so intense that I could only take it in small portions, and even then I sometimes felt overwhelmed. For in sharing her own identity-forming memories with us, she invites us to plumb more deeply into our own. And both exercises, although potentially liberating, can also be harrowing.

Seriously one of the best graphic novels. Adult topics -- grief, suicide, sexuality -- all handled with deep thought and introspection.

[Copied from my Goodreads review] You've probably heard of Alison Bechdel thanks to something used in film criticism called the Bechdel Test. For a film to pass the test it need to feature (1) at least two named female characters who (2) talk to each other about (3) something other than a man. Sadly, a lot of movies don't pass this simple three-question test... I had fun reading Fun home: A Family Tragicomic and checking to see if Bechdel's graphic memoir passed her eponymous test. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but that's probably just because the test is meant to check films that feature a lot of dialogue and not graphic novels with a lot of narration. Fun Home tells the story of Bechdel's relationship with her father with plenty of literary allusions (Icarus, The Great Gatsby, what seems to be the entire works of James Joyce). There's also a wide overarching theme of sexuality due to both Alison and her father being gay. The novel is by no means chronological, but as the story continues you revisit scenes with new knowledge. Bruce (Alison's father) was a closeted high school English teacher and funeral director (who worked at a FUNeral HOME, get it?) who obsesses over restoring the Bechdel house to its Victorian glory. Helen (Alison's mother) worked on her dissertation whenever she wasn't acting in local theatrical productions (that often lent themselves to having themes pertinent to Alison or her parents' lives). It's in college that Alison realizes she's a lesbian and shortly after coming out to her parents, she finds out that her parents are getting a divorce because of her own father's homosexualtiy. While Alison and her father could have used their shared queerness to grow closer, fate (or her father's decision to kill himself) prevented that from happening. Just weeks after news of the divorce comes out, Bruce is killed by a Sunbeam delivery truck. The official ruling was after crossing the road, something like a snake in the grass caused him to jump backwards into the path of the truck, but Alison thinks he may have backed into the road on purpose. Many parts of the story focus on Alison wondering if her own coming out may have caused her father to commit suicide. The story and artwork were all very nice. The literary allusions were a little overbearing. Most of them went over my head; I feel like there should be a Cliffs Notes companion pamphlet sold with this to explain most of the connections. What I really want to do now is watch the Broadway musical adaptation of this story. Ever since I saw Sydney Lucas destroy at last year's Tony Awards with "Ring of Keys" I wanted to see what this musical was about. I'm glad I read the novel first but I can't imagine how different everything would be on stage.

One of the best books I've read recently, I've fallen in love with Alison Bechdel way of drawing as well as writing. To write such a deep and personal story, drenching the book in a fun yet tragic atmosphere... It's like magic. I really recommend you buy this book, like, right now.

I chose this for my bookclub to read as an example of a graphic novel, none of us ever having read one before. I quickly realised that this was a memoir which made it even more interesting. From the start there are pointers that her life is developing into a tragic tale. We are left in no doubt that her father was a complicated man with many internal torments. The language is rich and luxurious with the great use of some unusual words (one or two even had me looking up definitions). I've now read a few graphic books and think this book is put together brilliantly. The words and pictures both add to each other. There is great detail in the graphics as well, many of which add more to the story than the words can alone. There is much tragedy but it is related in a blackly humorous way (man times crossing back and forward the line between comedy and tragedy). The narrative sections break into four types: the overall story telling, dialogue in speech bubbles, occasional explanatory notes and labels highlighting an element of a drawing. Essentially the book is about a father and daughter relationship. They struggle to come to terms with their differences whilst refusing to acknowledge their obvious similarities. Much of the commonality is around literature and the arts, leading to a few points where the author relies too heavily on literary references. However, I very much liked the reliance on the artistic talents in the family, particularly the mother's acting which allows her to step away from her real world. What strikes me most about this book is the depth of emotion that is written into every, carefully chosen, word. It can be a cliche to say that the process of writing is cathartic but, with this book, that feels appropriate.

É impressionante porque é ao mesmo tempo uma narrativa familiar muito íntima mas uma análise em alguns momentos até bem imparcial de uma pessoa tão próxima como o próprio pai. A arte é incrível, a narrativa é brilhante e se você tem problemas com seu pai você provavelmente vai chorar algumas vezes.

Szybka dostawa. Książka przyszła w idealnym stanie. Sposób pakowania (kartonowe pudełko typu tear off) bardzo mi przypadło do gustu.

FUN HOME ist gewiß kein Comic im Sinne der Funnies, und das FUN im Titel steht als sarkastische Abkürzung für Funeral Home, jenes Bestattungsunternehmen, das der Vater der Ich-Erzählerin Alison neben seiner Tätigkeit als Englischlehrer betreibt. Viel „Fun“ gibt es in Alison Bechdels Autobiographie nicht, und doch gelingt es ihr, die dicht verwobene und literarisch anspielungsreich erzählte Geschichte ihrer Kindheit und Jugend mit milder Ironie und gelegentlichem Humor zu durchwirken. Fun Home ist die Geschichte vom Aufwachsen in einer Familie, in der Zuneigung und Wärme nur selten gezeigt werden und jedes Familienmitglied solipsistisch seinen Weg beschreitet. Alison Bechdel beschreibt nicht nur offen die Ursachen, sondern auch die Folgen, die ein solches Leben in der Seele eines Kindes anrichtet. Der ferne Vater, dessen Zuneigung zu jungen Männern die Familie fast ins Verderben stürzt, die Mutter, die Zuflucht auf der Bühne sucht, und schließlich Alison selbst, die als genaue Beobachterin ihrer selbst und der Familie schon von früh an Tagebuch führt und bald selbst neurotisches Verhalten an den Tag legt. Die gewissenhafte Selbsterforschung, die Fun Home auch ist, geht nicht zuletzt der Frage nach, ob der Tod des Vaters, der vermutlich ein Freitod war, in einer Beziehung zum Coming Out von Alison steht. Besonders anrührend ist die kurze Phase vor dem Tod des Vaters, als es zu einem stillen Einverständnis zwischen Alison und ihm kommt. FUN HOME setzt sich über Genregrenzen mit größter Selbstverständlichkeit hinweg. Der Text hat hohe literarische Qualität, sprachlich und in seinen intertextuellen Bezügen. Ohne dass es aufgesetzt wirkt, verbindet Bechdel ihre Biografie mit literarischen Bezügen zu Camus, Proust und Joyce. Von daher wäre FUN HOME schon als reiner Roman ein Glücksfall. Bechdel, die auch als Zeichnerin großes Potential hat, macht aus ihrer Biografie eine Graphic Novel. Dabei tragen die Bilder massgeblich zur Stimmung bei und ergänzen den Text optimal. Sollte ich das Haar in der Suppe finden, würde ich darauf hinweisen, dass die Gesichtsausdrücke ihrer Protagonisten sich immer sehr ähnlich sehen (aber es ist andererseits ja nicht ungewöhnlich, dass manche Menschen über keine große Mimik verfügen)und dass sie ihren beiden Geschwistern überhaupt keine Beachtung schenkt. Ohne jede Einschränkung ist FUN HOME zu empfehlen: Allen Lesern, die Biografien mögen; allen Lesern, die gut geschriebene Bücher lieben; allen Leser, die sich für Graphic Novels interessieren; allen Lesern, denen das Thema Coming Out nicht unangenehm, vielleicht sogar von Interesse ist. Kurzum: Jeder möge für sich selbst prüfen, warum er dieses Buch nicht schon längst gelesen oder wiedergelesen hat (ach, sie haben es schon gelesen, nur ich habe es erst jetzt gelesen? Oh, ich bitte um Entschuldigung). Bewertung: 6 von 5 stellaren Sternen.