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Review: Fun Home
Fun Home
Written and Drawn by Alison Bechdel
Published by Houghton Mifflin Books. $19.99 USD
I've been emailing so many friends about this terrific book I hope I still have the energy for the actual review. Fun Home stands to be the breakout graphic novel hit of the Summer, or 2006 itself, and this is a good year already. It will be a hit not just because this graphic memoir (not technically a graphic novel, but let them call it what they will) will strike a chord with gays or anyone who knows the pain and frustration of someone they know who is gay, but because it's a tremendously accomplished, layered work. In fact, while Bechdel's growing up and coming out is one of the major "plots" of this book (it's her point of view, after all), it's not the only one or even the most important one. Well, it's half of the equation, actually. The theme of the book is Art and Artifice, and both impact Bechdel's world profoundly over the course of her childhood and into adulthood, as a woman who creates honest art without much artifice, in her syndicated Dykes to Watch out for newspaper strip.
The art she encounters in an artistic family living in a small Pennsylvania town. Mother performed in local theater, while her father, Bruce, put his energies into restoring their Victorian house, during the times he wasn't at work at the funeral home he inherited (the Bechdel children dubbed this the "Fun Home," hence the title of the book). From the dazzling, mythological beginning of the book, Bechdel lets us know that the story will be about her and her father, their bond, and their reversal on the tale of Icarus, as the child is given wings to fly but it is the father who is burnt by the sun and cast down.
The artifice is present in the details and mirrors and bric-a-brac Bruce puts into his home, as well as his flamboyant appearance and manner, making him a kind of Appalachian Jay Gatsby, as someone calls him later in the book. Bruce has secret desires that drive and torment him--he's a closeted homosexual with three children and with a respected position in the community. He dies, at 44, in mysterious fashion, never escaping the community in which he was raised, never escaping to a life that might have made him happier. But Alison does escape.
The book is about a lot of things, and yes, it's even about the father and daughter learning about each other's sexuality and making a different kind of connection before death separates them, but Bechdel is too clever and funny to get earnest and sappy on us. Art enriches the book and inspires Bechdel to find fascinating parallels between her and her father and Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as two of the hardest-to-penetrate novels ever, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and James Joyce's Ulysses. She's such a smart, literate writer that she almost apologizes for pointing out the coincidence of her loss of innocence--menstruation, with the national loss of innocence--Watergate. Plenty of other writers would make that the centerpiece of their books, but it's too cheap for Bechdel. With an efficient, warm line and sophisticated storytelling on par with Alan Moore, Tom Wolfe and just about anyone else, Fun Home is stunning and wonderful.
Written and Drawn by Alison Bechdel
Published by Houghton Mifflin Books. $19.99 USD
I've been emailing so many friends about this terrific book I hope I still have the energy for the actual review. Fun Home stands to be the breakout graphic novel hit of the Summer, or 2006 itself, and this is a good year already. It will be a hit not just because this graphic memoir (not technically a graphic novel, but let them call it what they will) will strike a chord with gays or anyone who knows the pain and frustration of someone they know who is gay, but because it's a tremendously accomplished, layered work. In fact, while Bechdel's growing up and coming out is one of the major "plots" of this book (it's her point of view, after all), it's not the only one or even the most important one. Well, it's half of the equation, actually. The theme of the book is Art and Artifice, and both impact Bechdel's world profoundly over the course of her childhood and into adulthood, as a woman who creates honest art without much artifice, in her syndicated Dykes to Watch out for newspaper strip.
The art she encounters in an artistic family living in a small Pennsylvania town. Mother performed in local theater, while her father, Bruce, put his energies into restoring their Victorian house, during the times he wasn't at work at the funeral home he inherited (the Bechdel children dubbed this the "Fun Home," hence the title of the book). From the dazzling, mythological beginning of the book, Bechdel lets us know that the story will be about her and her father, their bond, and their reversal on the tale of Icarus, as the child is given wings to fly but it is the father who is burnt by the sun and cast down.
The artifice is present in the details and mirrors and bric-a-brac Bruce puts into his home, as well as his flamboyant appearance and manner, making him a kind of Appalachian Jay Gatsby, as someone calls him later in the book. Bruce has secret desires that drive and torment him--he's a closeted homosexual with three children and with a respected position in the community. He dies, at 44, in mysterious fashion, never escaping the community in which he was raised, never escaping to a life that might have made him happier. But Alison does escape.
The book is about a lot of things, and yes, it's even about the father and daughter learning about each other's sexuality and making a different kind of connection before death separates them, but Bechdel is too clever and funny to get earnest and sappy on us. Art enriches the book and inspires Bechdel to find fascinating parallels between her and her father and Oscar Wilde and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as two of the hardest-to-penetrate novels ever, Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and James Joyce's Ulysses. She's such a smart, literate writer that she almost apologizes for pointing out the coincidence of her loss of innocence--menstruation, with the national loss of innocence--Watergate. Plenty of other writers would make that the centerpiece of their books, but it's too cheap for Bechdel. With an efficient, warm line and sophisticated storytelling on par with Alan Moore, Tom Wolfe and just about anyone else, Fun Home is stunning and wonderful.
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