Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
232 p. : chiefly ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Alison Bechdel has been creating comics for many years for her syndicated Dykes to Watch Out For which has a small but significant following. Her book Fun Home, which had both popular and critical success is likely to bring her work to a much wider audience - something she apparently was not prepared for.
The praise for this work - which calls to mind another standout graphic novel Stitches - is well deserved. It is a rich memoir/graphic novel which is subtle and nuanced as it tells the story of Bechdel's complex, rich, and troubled family of origin - led by parents whose frustrated dreams and repressed sexuality created an intense environment of simmering anger and emotional detachment.
The amazing thing about Fun Home is that in addition to illustrating the conflicts and tensions in her home, Bechdel is able to convey what a rich and tangled upbringing she had. Her father and mother were both aspiring intellectuals/artists and much of the power of her work lies in her ambivalence toward the legacy of her family - and her refusal to either condemn or condone the shortcomings of her parents. Her memoir also deserves praise the ways in which it circles around themes and events the story instead of following a singular straightforward narrative and the ways in which she finds echos of her upbringing in film, myths and novels.
I would highly recommend this graphic novel to students who are interested in a multi-layered, complex coming of age stories and family stories dealing with secrets, conflict and even death - since her father's apparent suicide (possibly an accident) is at the heart of this fine work. The novel does deal with some mature emotional and sexual issues, so it might not be suitable for immature readers.
No comments:
Post a Comment