Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

68 reviews

jonmayb's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

1.0

Fun Home told the story of Alison Bechdel's childhood and early adulthood. The structure is non-linear, and many of the events Bechdel recounts are either concretely or loosely tied to either her coming out or two her father's suspected suicide.
Nonetheless, soon after Alison comes out to her parents, she learns that her own father was also queer, but that he slept with young boys. Her father was a pedophile. He is hit by a truck and passes away soon after this is revealed to he. All of these particular details are first revealed early on in the story, and the rest of the story jumps around in recounting events Bechdel loosely correlates with them. Much of the story seems to be spent attempting to justify and rationalise her father's actions. Overall, this book was a pain in the ass to get through

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kaimetcalfe's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5


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tiernanhunter's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective fast-paced

4.0


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jaywithwhiskey's review against another edition

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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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waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

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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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steveatwaywords's review against another edition

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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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literaryinluv's review against another edition

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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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ferdie's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Fun House is intellectual and vulnerable. The cartoon style really helps show the emotion behind the complex thoughts. I was not familiar with all the literature references so I feel like I missed some points of the book :(

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readingrainbowroad's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0


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marigoldgem's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0


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