Name: Fun Home
Rating: 4.071651090342679 (321 reviews)
ISBN: 9780618871711

Alison Bechdel

A memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father--a funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.

A Family Tragicomic

Fun Home

from Chapter 1: Old Father, Old Artificer

🧃

For if my father was Icarus, he was also Daedalus—that skillful artificer, that mad scientist who built the wings for his son and designed the famous labyrinth…and who answered not to the laws of society, but to those of his craft. 

…but it was impossible to tell if the minotaur lay beyond the next corner. And the constant tension was heightened by the fact that some encounters could be quite pleasant. 

…his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb. He really was there all those years, a flesh-and-blood presence steaming off the wallpaper, digging up the dogwoods, polishing the finials…smelling of sawdust and sweat and designer cologne. But I ached as if he were already gone. 

cedar winslow

Colette could write better than anyone about physical things; they include the feel of a peach in one’s hand. A man could only write in this way about a woman’s breast. 

They say that grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief. 

But it was impossible to tell if the minotaur lay beyond the next corner. And the constant tension was heightened by the fact that some encounters could be quite pleasant. 

Alison's father is a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. This work shows a daughter's complex yearning for her father.

Jennifer

This graphic memoir is unlike anything else I’ve read. It is entertaining (because of the pictures...and content...but pictures) and gripping with its unique tone. I wish there were more graphic memoirs like this. I now have a renewed determination to read Ulysses and the Odyssey to better understand this book but we’ll see how long that feeling lasts. 

An unusual memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father, a historic preservation expert dedicated to restoring the family's Victorian ho

What I liked most about the book was her  drawing comparisons between her life and the media she consumed.

Cori Barnes

A bit tedious, super straining to read, but very enlightening and raw 

Anna Cassmer Ling-Vannérus

Wes Michaud

love the art. the story is told well. took me longer to read than I expected because of how heavy it is. I really enjoyed this book

Shaq H

read this sometime in august or september? gay dad :((

I read this a few years ago and didn’t really have a deep enough understanding to fully grasp the meaning of this graphic novel. Reading it again, it was still complex and intellectual, but I think I was able to enjoy it a bit more now that I’ve aged some. I appreciate the dark humor and existentialism/self-discovery thread throughout. Still a lot of literary depth I couldn’t fully grasp with all of the references to classic books, but I still felt immersed and drawn in despite that.

Erin Goss

okay I had to think about this for awhile before writing a review, because I've never read anything like this before. It's very emotional and deeply sentimental in a way that's hard to ignore. I didn't really have any queer friends or do any of the radical lesbian reading or stuff she talked about when I was in college, and I can't help but feel like this would have really changed some things for me if I had read this sooner. I also missed a lot of the literary references she talks about, which is why it's not 5 stars, just because I'm missing part of it, but not a fault of the book, I'll just revisit this later if I ever read Ulysses or something. The rest of it feels too much to even try talking about, and almost too personal for me to be reading some of it in the first place, but I'm glad she did and I'm glad I read it, really meant a lot to me. 

Kaye Barnett

This book had a cool way of tacking really intense subject matter through a readable, enjoyable voice. Interesting layout/style, wasn’t quite as cohesive as other graphic novels due to the heavy narration, but I did love the accompanying images. Definitely the most engaging and creative memoir I have read. 

Bechdel writes so lovingly it hurts. As always, I return to this book and it welcomes me by holding a mirror to myself and to my family. My father gifted me this book when I was in high school. The parallel to Bechdel’s father gifting her Colette’s autobiography stood out to me on my most recent reading. 

Alex 

love alison bechdel and complicated family dynamics

Clara Gauthier

In this groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel charts her fraught relationship with her late father. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

rumbledethumps

This memoir can probably best be described as a spiral, where the story turns in on itself, then jumps back out to a previous point on the spiral, then turns back in towards the center. The narrative structure is so good, giving the reader glimpses of the future, then going back to the past, then winding back to the future with new knowledge about what brought us here, then ultimately tightening everything down to a conclusion.

Really great book. Great illustrations, great understanding of both storytelling and the medium of comics.

Isabella

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Inkmelt

It's uncomfortably intimate and some thing's plain disturbing but I guess good art truly comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.

Emmm :p

It was quick to get through but all the Greek mythology bored me

Zoe Stricker

very beautifully done, such a complex story, sometimes i get irked by how pedantic Bechdel can be, but she's great nonetheless

Jeannette Ordas

I've been lax on the graphic novel trip this year, so this is the first one i've read in quite a while. After seeing a few pages of this graphic novel blown up in large format at the local art gallery, I put a library hold on this book immediately. Fun Home is a highly personal memoir not just about her relationship with her father but with sorting out family mysteries and the mysteries in her own life. This novel is filled with honesty, wit, literary allusions and beautifully drawn moments.

tragikomiks rodzinny

Fun home

first graphic novel i’ve read in a long time and i really liked it

Kayla Sitton

Izza

4 stars | "But in a way Gatsby's pristine books and my father's worn ones signify the same thing--the preference of a fiction to reality."

Fun Home - Uma Tragicomedia em Familia

Lara Reis

jamais imaginei ler uma história tão rica e densa em quadrinhos. i’m shook

just as personal and wonderful as the musical. ily alison bechdel

Erin O’Donnell

Nelson Zagalo

Brilliant. A magnificent journey throughout the life of a young girl and her particular family. Being a true story makes it even more engaging, however the reading excitement occurs because of the excellence of the dramatic discourse. The non-linear narrative designed by Alison Bechdel is suspenseful making us constantly wish for more. On the other side the ambiance mildly melodramatic spotted with great dark humour creates a real and personal feeling. "Fun Home" is a tour de force in the comics scene, elevating the art to a kind of grandeur that is normally only recognised to literature.

Nicole Dykeman

A very interesting and complex memoir, but it could get kinda dull sometimes.

Steph L 

A heartfelt Graphic Novel

I loved this book so much. I really enjoyed it because it was a look into the life and the relationship between the family. I loved the way the story was told, and I felt like I was along for the ride. The art in the novel was lovely and it really enhanced the story by helping bring the text to life. I recommend that everyone read this book.

Fun Home A Family Tragicomic

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