Are You My Mother?

surya reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Clearly Virigina Wolf and the likes are not my cup of tea.

Eduardo Santiago reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

(Disclaimer: a close friend of mine really liked this book; another friend, I see now, gave it five stars. Both are intelligent people. So it’s entirely possible that I’m just not smart enough to get it.)

That said: ugh. This is basically a collection of Bechdel’s Kindle Clippings, sentences she really REALLY likes from the works of an obscure psychoanalyst and Virginia Woolf and a few others, with annotations of why they are JUST SO AMAZING; toss in long tedious play-by-plays of her own psychotherapy sessions; add lots of her own dreams; sprinkle liberally with insecurities and neuroses, add just the bare minimum of Bechdel’s beautiful art, and send it to a publisher.

Bechdel is brilliant. Talented, intelligent, compassionate. Adorable, too, I’m sure (a recurring theme). [b:Fun Home|38990|Fun Home A Family Tragicomic|Alison Bechdel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327652831l/38990.SY75.jpg|911368] is poignant, touching, witty, wonderful. Insightful. But this one... is not her best work. It’s …

(Disclaimer: a close friend of mine really liked this book; another friend, I see now, gave it five stars. Both are intelligent people. So it’s entirely possible that I’m just not smart enough to get it.)

That said: ugh. This is basically a collection of Bechdel’s Kindle Clippings, sentences she really REALLY likes from the works of an obscure psychoanalyst and Virginia Woolf and a few others, with annotations of why they are JUST SO AMAZING; toss in long tedious play-by-plays of her own psychotherapy sessions; add lots of her own dreams; sprinkle liberally with insecurities and neuroses, add just the bare minimum of Bechdel’s beautiful art, and send it to a publisher.

Bechdel is brilliant. Talented, intelligent, compassionate. Adorable, too, I’m sure (a recurring theme). [b:Fun Home|38990|Fun Home A Family Tragicomic|Alison Bechdel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327652831l/38990.SY75.jpg|911368] is poignant, touching, witty, wonderful. Insightful. But this one... is not her best work. It’s tedious, unengaging.

Virginia Woolf, Bechdel informs us, felt liberated of her mother after having written “To the Lighthouse”. I get the feeling Bechdel learned that and set off to liberate her own self. She very clearly needed to write this—and I earnestly hope it was successful, that she got what she needed. But I didn’t need to read it, nor, I think, do you.

EnigmaticLabs reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Came across as self indulgent. The characters and plot were uninteresting, I couldn't get myself to care about the story or the protagonist, no matter how hard I tried.

gtc-one reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

More personal and more mature than Fun Home, AYMM follows a recursive line jumping along and among time lines. Bechdel pulls threads from psychology, drama, literature and her own life in an entertaining classic po-mo style.

nekokat reviewed Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are You My Mother?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This is good. It's pretty heavy at times and gets deep into some Freudian psychology stuff that I have complicated feelings about, but I've never read a memoir / psychology primer in graphic novel form before so that was interesting.

Kattas reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Both more and less than Fun Home, the focus on psychological analysis makes this worth further study.

Realistic Pessimist reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

As Bechdel and her mother in the book agree on: this is a metabook. A book about analysing her relationship to her mother with the theories of Donald Winnicott, Alice Miller, a pinch of Freud and Lacan, and lots of literary references to Virginia Woolf. It is not an easy read. But anybody who is willing to dive into psychological theories about the development of infants and the mother-child-relationship will find it is worth the effort. It seems the book itself is her therapeutic process to understand her relationship with her mother (hence the title), so it is not really shaped to entertain a reader. My only criticism might be, that, as it happens when you've found a theory that finally seems to explain issues one has been struggling with for a while, Bechdel tries a bit too hard to squeeze everything into this interpretation grid, and things seem to …

As Bechdel and her mother in the book agree on: this is a metabook. A book about analysing her relationship to her mother with the theories of Donald Winnicott, Alice Miller, a pinch of Freud and Lacan, and lots of literary references to Virginia Woolf. It is not an easy read. But anybody who is willing to dive into psychological theories about the development of infants and the mother-child-relationship will find it is worth the effort. It seems the book itself is her therapeutic process to understand her relationship with her mother (hence the title), so it is not really shaped to entertain a reader. My only criticism might be, that, as it happens when you've found a theory that finally seems to explain issues one has been struggling with for a while, Bechdel tries a bit too hard to squeeze everything into this interpretation grid, and things seem to loose some of their connections to the background they are woven in outside of this therapeutical process.

pithypants reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Alison Bechdel is a talented writer and artist. This is the first long-format graphic novel I've read and I found it immensely readable. If I were more of a Virginia Woolf fan or more familiar with Winnicut's psychology, I may have enjoyed this more because she does a good job telling her story within the larger context of universal mother-child challenges. She kind of reminded me of the neurotic friends who fill my Facebook wall with posts about their every thought and action, no matter how mundane, because they've had too much therapy.

periwinkleReads reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Very beautiful and touching, although occasionally the monologue becomes a bit tedious. Bechdel is bold and holds nothing back. The stream of consciousness, which often achieves meta-status, makes the story sometimes feel like it is dragging. The art, of course, is quite charming and detailed. There was a key moment where her expression was not visible because it unfortunately was paced in the bind of the book - that made me sad for the lost opportunity to see her rendition of her expression. I hope she restarts Dykes to Watch Out For now!

A. Rivera reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I am giving this book three stars, but I think I am being a bit generous. Two stars may be a bit closer to how I felt about it, but the book is not a total loss. I feel bad about that rating given that I enjoyed her previous book, Fun Home, immensely. The main problem, and we may as well just get to it right away, is the excessive psychoanalysis stuff she has put throughout the book. At times the book feels more like I am reading a psychology and psychoanalysis textbook than an actual biography/memoir. A little bit would have been ok, but once it became practically every single page of Winnicott says this, and Virginia Woolf says that, and Freud said the other thing, I sort of starting tuning out. That is a pity because Bechdel does have a good and universal story to tell: that …

I am giving this book three stars, but I think I am being a bit generous. Two stars may be a bit closer to how I felt about it, but the book is not a total loss. I feel bad about that rating given that I enjoyed her previous book, Fun Home, immensely. The main problem, and we may as well just get to it right away, is the excessive psychoanalysis stuff she has put throughout the book. At times the book feels more like I am reading a psychology and psychoanalysis textbook than an actual biography/memoir. A little bit would have been ok, but once it became practically every single page of Winnicott says this, and Virginia Woolf says that, and Freud said the other thing, I sort of starting tuning out. That is a pity because Bechdel does have a good and universal story to tell: that of how mothers and daughters relate to each other. The book would make a nice companion to the graphic novel memoir about her father. The art is very good; she does an excellent job with the art as she did before. And the book does have some poignant and moving moments in the story of a woman trying to figure out her relationship to her mother and looking at how she grew up as daughter of a woman of many talents who had to repress them for a marriage that would turn out less than ideal. It is compelling, but all the psychology stuff simply gets in the way. It's like Bechdel can't have an insight without having to quote some textbook or other, and that, sadly, detracts from the work. So, if you liked Fun Home, then you may want to read this for the sake of completion. However, if you have to choose between the two, pick the other one.

Gossamerchild reviewed Are you my mother? by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Are you my mother?' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

There is something so...tricky about Bechdel's writing style. Not to mention the design of the book. It is, as her mother states towards the end, truly a "meta" piece of work.