_Fun Home_, by Alison Bechdel

Having made my last post about everything that's wrong with comics in America, I want to spend sometime talking about what's right. And this book definitely qualifies.

Alison Bechdel is best known for her long-running comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For". I've read some of those, and some other miscellaneous work she's done over the years. I liked her well enough that when I read a positive review of this book (probably in The Comics Journal), I made a mental note to pick it up. I'm glad I did.

This book is a major leap forward for her. She displays a quiet but complete command of language and structure, both visual and verbal. Even if you aren't interested in the subject matter, any connossieur of the form is well advised to give this a look.

The subject matter is the author's relationship with her family, most specifically her father. Shortly after she came out as a lesbian (in college), she found out that her father had long been having sex with young boys. Not long after, he died under circumstances which may have been either accident or suicide. To some extent, this book is an attempt to make sense of her experiences growing up, now that she has so much more information than she did at the time.

This is also a book about books. Bechdel's family was emotionally disconnected. Many of the places they *did* connect were through shared literary experiences. Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Collette and Joyce, even Oscar Wilde -- all are almost characters in their own right in this story.

The title comes from the family nickname for the family business. While her father was an interior decorator by avocation, his *profession* was that of a mortician. This led her to have a somewhat unusual relationship to death. Bechdel talks about seeing Charles Addams cartoons before she was able to read and seeing them as very like her own family. (Her art style owes a good deal to Edward Gorey, especially in the way she draws eyes.)

Highly recommended.

_Fun Home_, by Alison Bechdel

Having made my last post about everything that's wrong with comics in America, I want to spend sometime talking about what's right. And this book definitely qualifies.

Alison Bechdel is best known for her long-running comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For". I've read some of those, and some other miscellaneous work she's done over the years. I liked her well enough that when I read a positive review of this book (probably in The Comics Journal), I made a mental note to pick it up. I'm glad I did.

This book is a major leap forward for her. She displays a quiet but complete command of language and structure, both visual and verbal. Even if you aren't interested in the subject matter, any connossieur of the form is well advised to give this a look.

The subject matter is the author's relationship with her family, most specifically her father. Shortly after she came out as a lesbian (in college), she found out that her father had long been having sex with young boys. Not long after, he died under circumstances which may have been either accident or suicide. To some extent, this book is an attempt to make sense of her experiences growing up, now that she has so much more information than she did at the time.

This is also a book about books. Bechdel's family was emotionally disconnected. Many of the places they *did* connect were through shared literary experiences. Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Collette and Joyce, even Oscar Wilde -- all are almost characters in their own right in this story.

The title comes from the family nickname for the family business. While her father was an interior decorator by avocation, his *profession* was that of a mortician. This led her to have a somewhat unusual relationship to death. Bechdel talks about seeing Charles Addams cartoons before she was able to read and seeing them as very like her own family. (Her art style owes a good deal to Edward Gorey, especially in the way she draws eyes.)

Highly recommended.