Fun home

a family tragicomic

by Alison Bechdel

Hardcover, 232 pages

English language

Published Oct. 4, 2006 by Houghton Mifflin.

ISBN:: 978-0-618-47794-4
OCLC Number:: 769187329

(108 reviews)

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books.

This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most …

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books.

12 editions

WardenRed reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

None

5 stars

Our selves were all we had.

From the subtitle and some of the reviews I’ve seen, I expected a more or less even mixture of heavy life stuff and dark humor. There were, however, very few pages that made me smile. For the most part the book put me in a melancholy mood and made me feel sorry for most of the people I was reading about. I did recognize the humor and vibed with it, though, even if I didn’t find it funny. What I mean is, I’ve got a bunch of stuff, like entire parts of my life, that I never talk about much because when I used to retell those parts as what I thought were fun anecdotes, it always made for awkward moments and shocked people and me slowly realizing that instead of something humorous I’ve said something really morbid. The humor in here is much like that—likely super funny if you’ve been there, but few else get to laugh—and it was really, really relatable to me.

All in all, this is a rather thorough exploration of one family’s many, many issues, with a focus on the author’s father who may or may not have committed suicide and her complicated, difficult grief for him. All the dysfunction is portrayed with a lot of compassion, and the art and prose blend very well together, though at times I did feel like the choice of words was a bit… pretentious, maybe? But it also made me pause and squint at some not-so-familiar words, and thus focus more on specific moments of the narrative, so in hindsight, I rather appreciate the effect. Altogether it made for a relatively quick yet not easy read that’s going to stick with me for some time.

Clare reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Thoughtful, introspective exploration of family, father/daughter relationships, and queerness. Really interesting and entertaining childhood biography. The art throughout was great as well

Jens reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I don't have the words to describe how this autobiographic graphic novel gripped me, entertained and shook me, made me grateful and hateful. Excuse the rhyme.

Alison Bechdel's drawings work exceptionally well with her words, neither overpowers the other. Together they form a narrative on her time as a child and youth and particularly about the relationship with her father. She mentions other works of literature very often - she clearly is well-read, and this can be overpowering at times.
If you, like me, did not grow up queer in rural Pennsylvania, you will get an excellent first-hand impression by reading this remarkable piece of literature.

I leave everything else for you to discover - and discover it you should.

anaulin reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

My notes: anaulin.org/blog/book-notes-fun-home/

Eduardo Santiago reviewed Fun home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

If you only know Bechdel from her comic strip, like I did, this will feel both familiar and alien. The art is unmistakeably hers: clean, rich in detail but not distractingly so, greatly enhancing her narrative. The narrative: that’s less recognizable. It’s raw, often uncomfortable; not to mention book-length. And it works! She has an incredible voice, and I find I prefer this format over DTWOF which I often found cramped. Here she has space to move more gently; without the need for wisecracks or bon mots—they’re present, just paced more deliberately. She feels genuine. Vulnerable. And hella strong.

(If you don’t know Bechdel, you should. Would I recommend this as your introduction? I don’t know. It can be heavy. The coldness of her upbringing is every-page heartbreaking; her parents’ loneliness overwhelming. But yeah, even if you aren’t a fan, I would say: start here.)

settingshadow reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Although we share an alma mater, Alison Bechdel is sufficiently older than me that when I first heard of her, she was already a realtively famous sensation, with a popular webcomic, which was soon to be followed by an eponymous test that would be cited in every feminist movie review for the rest of time. So, thinking about her as an unassuming child, forced into girly clothing was a little odd.

Usually, memoir (especially graphic memoir) is form over substance, as no one's real life is actually very interesting, but Bechdel's childhood may be an exception to that rule. Her early years are dominated by a gothic house, kept to exacting detail; a mortuary that seems to resurface in the narrative at particularly apropos moments and a relationship with her father that is largely dominated by F. Scott Fitzgerald allusions.

Bechdel drops hints along the way that she is not …

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A very intimate and personal book, beautifully telling the story of Bechdel's youth.

b bennett reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I've always thought of Fun Home as essential reading for young dykes, and now I can finally say that I've read this gay classic. I went in expecting to identify mainly with Bechdel, a lesbian icon. Therefore I was surprised at my affinity for Bechdel's father, who is another "manic depressive fag."

Bookish, Fun Home is probably best understood by English majors. A slew of classics are used as literary devices in the graphic novel, and I'm pretty sure I only caught a few of them.

SBWright reviewed Fun home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I knew of Alison Bechdel from listening to the Galactic Suburbia Podcast, and knew of her particularly from the Bechdel test ( a rough rule of thumb for determining whether or not a creative work is gender biased). So on hearing that she was the headline act at the Comics Can Do Anything stream at Adelaide Writers Week I was determined to go and see her.

One of the best, most professional presenters I have seen in recent times. If you get the chance to attend a talk by her, regardless of whether you are interested in feminism or QUILTBAG issues or graphic novels, go. You won’t be disappointed.

Fun Home seems to have been the book that really launched Bechdel to the wider world. Previously she had been famous for her self syndicated comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, which ran for some 31 years. While I certainly enjoyed the humour, the observations and the political commentary in Dykes to Watch Out For I can see why Fun Home reached a wider audience.

For a start it’s a memoir and a somewhat tragic one at that, which explores Bechdel’s life and her relationship with her father. People always seem drawn to a well articulated rendition of someone else’s misfortune or tragedy. But by and large it’s the choice of image, combined with Bechdel’s voiced over recollection that really made this work stand out for me. There’s a couple of stand out panels where the words and the image leave space for the reader to make connections, making for a subtle but powerful statement/impact on the reader.

There is a forward progression in the narrative but each chapter seems to pursue its own trajectory and as such it’s not a linear tale from early memory to Bechdel’s father’s death. It seems to me to more like sitting and listening/watching different aspects of the same tale. Bechdel following one thread of thought and imagery in one chapter and others in following chapters. In that sense we get a layering, an organic approach, which to my mind is possibly more akin to how our own memory works than the standard chronological recording that might organise your standard memoir

It might have been post festival blues, but reading Fun Home did seem to leave me with a palpable sense of melancholy. That to my mind is a momentous achievement in any text, to engage with the emotions of the reader.

Fun Home is a tragicomic, there’s sadness but there’s also recognition and love in all its diverse manifestations.

AliCorbin reviewed Fun home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun home' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A slender group - only Kim and me and a new person, who happens to live in the apartments off the end of 28th Pl. (Of course, we were conflicting with Sherman Alexie's talk, so that probably drew a bunch of people off.) A graphic novel was a bit out of our collective comfort zone, but a graphic memoir was totally out there for us. This was a family unlike the ones that we'd had growing up. And thank God for that! Even if the kids were not abused, they were shown no love by either of their parents. (At least, none that Alison remembers, or that she chose to portray.) Her father was depicted as tortured (by his repulsion for his closeted sexuality, as she found out later) and her mother as deeply unhappy, long fallen out of love with her husband, and now trapped in loveless marriage in …

Sharyl reviewed Fun home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is my current book discussion group pick, and my first graphic novel. It's a very engaging and thought-provoking autobiography. I do have questions regarding Ms. Bechdel's perception of her father and a certain event, which probably makes it all the more interesting. I thought the style of the artwork had a Doonesbury influence, which may have been intentional, since it takes place mostly in the 1970s.

Teabat reviewed Fun home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun home' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

An intriguing graphic novel about family secrets, sexual identity, and how one girl relates to her father.

Gossamerchild reviewed Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Review of 'Fun Home' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

This was great-a memoir in graphic novel form. Bechdel has a comic strip that's syndicated throughout the country and I've always enjoyed her work. This was a little...over my head in some parts, but I still enjoyed the challenge.