Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

155 reviews

mommybookwyrmm's review against another edition

Very depressing and I was not in the right mindset for it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Suicide

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

jaywithwhiskey's review against another edition

lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

2.0

It was fine. I think this book was much more hyped up than I enjoyed it. I read this after someone told me this is where the Bechdel test started - sadly I thought it was this book particularly - so I was waiting for when it came around. It never did. I was bored through most of the story sadly, I couldn't relate this this story but I appreciate it for what it is. Just not for me. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Car accident, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Drug use, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Death, Infidelity, Rape, and Grief

beata's review against another edition

 Maybe I didn't pay close enough attention to the blurb, but when I read that the father was gay, I did not expect to see in the book itself that he slept with "boys" aka his high school students. Then I immediatly thought oh, he killed himself because the truth was out and he was facing charges. But no, he maybe killed himself because his wife was finally fed up and asked for divorce. He was even facing charges years before, on surface about giving alcohol to minor but if the author is to believed with unspoken accusation of at least soliciting minor (maybe even full on sexual assault). 
The story is messed up on many many levels. First, her father was himself sexually abused as a child. Then he went on to do this to others. Then we learn that his psychiatrist very possibly had an affair with him during court mandated appointments?! Of course I also can't forget physical abuse of his own children. And last but not least was the author glossing over the abuse her father inflicted on others. 
I'll be honest with you, I've read graphic novels a lot longer than this one, and they felt shorter.
I will not rate it, lately I'm more reluctant to rate non-fiction, especially of the memoir kind. Who am I to say if someone's life story is a 3 or 5 star?
This will definitely stay with me, though not necessarily in a good way. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Car accident, Child abuse, Death, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual assault and Adult/minor relationship

waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

There's nothing I can say about Fun Home that hasn't already been said by better, smarter people with better, smarter vocabulary, so I'll just say that I found this book deeply relatable, deeply sad, and deeply hopeful. It's a gorgeous book with gorgeous prose and gorgeous illustrations. I highly recommend it, but it's not for the faint of heart. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Grief, Lesbophobia, Pedophilia, Death, Death of parent, Mental illness, Car accident, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, Suicide attempt, and Suicide

readwithbells's review against another edition

3.75

Oof. A challenging meditation on how Bechdel’s dad overshadowed every aspect of her life and her complicated relationship with him both in spite of and because of what he has done. Can’t say it was enjoyable but it was beautifully done. 

ok but did he actually kill himself?? I’m 50/50 on it tbh. Also wtf is with the child pedophilia. Yikes.

 

Read for Queer Writing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Pedophilia, and Death of parent

abbyb23's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional fast-paced

4.0

Bechdel is a great writer and the illustrations are really well done, but in some ways the message of the book felt lacking. Bechdel speaks about her father in a tongue in cheek way when talking about his crimes and flaws, which to me felt a bit understated. Although this bittersweet view of him is a good representation of the complicated feelings toward any flawed family member, it’s just a bit too forgiving to me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Suicide, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, and Child abuse

This is a very trauma filled book, with very highest portrayals of the aftermath of that trauma.

aleksanski's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Homophobia, Adult/minor relationship, Death, Death of parent, and Mental illness

thesuperkim's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Car accident, and Death

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Suicide, Alcohol, Lesbophobia, and Infidelity

Minor: Toxic relationship, Sexual assault, Homophobia, and Body horror

maggiegirouard's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Physical abuse, Alcohol, Car accident, Medical content, Infidelity, Violence, Mental illness, and Cursing

steveatwaywords's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

When Bechdel's graphic memoir tips its hand around its major secret in the first chapter, I wondered how she would spend the next six. She does not disappoint.

As she reflects on memories uncertain, limited omniscience, her own growing identity and how it biases her narrative agenda, challenges nostalgia and resolves/fails-to-resolve relationships (including with herself), and entangles all of it in thick and layered parallels to the literature she knows and will know, we find that Fun Home is about something far richer and more important than its mere family plot.  

This is worth the read to settle in to: I appreciated the genre which comes from her own growing artistic skill, her takes on her readings, and how polarizing ideologies somehow might fuse in unlikely places. The only reason I do not give it 5 stars is that once met, I wishes to stay there longer, that references to other complications and nuance might have been explored still more. She is certainly capable of doing it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Suicide, and Grief

Moderate: Homophobia and Sexual content

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Mental illness, and Infidelity

Illustrations of sexual situations are at times fairly graphic. Otherwise, the content warnings are verbal reckonings in memory; nearly all propel the major plot of the memoir.