Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

93 reviews

kaimetcalfe's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexism, Suicide, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Dysphoria

Moderate: Biphobia, Bullying, Drug use, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Violence, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Alcoholism, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, and Stalking

bek_p87's review against another edition

funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.75

I was terrified to read this book, because my mind struggles with the concept of graphic novels (do you read the captions first? the dialogue in the drawings? or do you look at the drawings first?). Turns out I had nothing to worry about - or, at least, nothing about the form of the book! There were, however, so many words and literary references I didn't fully understand (and I consider myself quite intelligent), that I started to feel that I wasn't smart enough to read this book.

It's always difficult to rate and review memoirs, but I did enjoy this, although the story jumped around A LOT, and that did make it difficult to follow. Having said that, I would certainly recommend this to the queer community, and to anyone with a complex relationship with a parent. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Suicide, and Death of parent

Moderate: Drug use

krivas91's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

3.5

3.5 stars? I always find it weird rating an author’s autobiographical content…but there’s still things that can be said. I appreciate the author’s extreme openness with her readers, and found it just really interesting to view her experience coming out as a lesbian while becoming aware of her father’s sexual activities and advances toward young men (teenagers), and figuring herself out as a child of two parents who did not outwardly/visibly show her love and affection hardly ever. 

However, there were so many times that the text was just so heavy (in the emotional sense, but also the literal-literature sense), and I found myself asking if we were even intended to read the images when she would picture mostly illegible letters by her father. 

Also, one review here noted the “references to classic literature that are carefully, artfully implemented and never daunting,” but I’d have to disagree; I understand that she connected to her father through literature and that’s why she included so much of it in her recollection, but I do think I felt like I was really missing something when I didn’t understand references or a few high-vocabulary words. I don’t think she could have written her way totally around that (or that she should have), but I do fear that some readers who could really use exposure to the coming out + family relationships content might be turned off of this book earlier on because of the dense presence of classic literature references.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Suicide, Car accident, Death of parent, and Lesbophobia

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

maggiegirouard's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

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

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

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: Suicide, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Homophobia and Sexual content

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

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.

skudiklier's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I read this much more quickly and easily than I thought I would; I read Are You My Mother? a few years ago, and though I liked it a lot, I think it was denser, or slower, for me at least. Maybe I'll reread it now that I have the context of this book too. 

I don't really have a lot to say about this book, except that I liked it and would recommend it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Sexism, Suicide, and Death of parent

Moderate: Pedophilia and Sexual content

dazyiscrazy's review against another edition

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Suicide, and Death of parent

Moderate: Death

literaryinluv's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

3.75

You can't really put a rating on someone's life or perspective of their life. But you can on the execution. This memoir is littered with literary references, sometimes to a fault, but I enjoyed most of them anyway. However, it also got a bit convoluted due to this. Overall, though, I enjoyed it, and I believe the rating may be higher if I read it a second time in the future.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Death of parent

Moderate: Suicide, Toxic relationship, and Car accident

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Biphobia, Homophobia, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Grief, Lesbophobia, and Alcohol

lily1304's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Sexual content