A review by cyborgforty
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

5.0

read because i had just re-listened to the musical after many years. somehow the multiple-timelines thing in the musical confused me as a high schooler but i was able to follow along easily. but this is about the book, not the musical, and like all books-turned-musicals, the original tragicomic contains so much more depth and detail than the showtunes. i loved reading this, as i knew i would. i wish i was as well-read as alison bechdel as a college freshman haha! the literary references and metaphors as fictional characters - the examination of one's childhood through narrative tropes - wow. and especially the examination of childhood journaling/writing habits, the "i think" symbol, the ellipses... the way in which the developing mind articulates itself is something i feel like we forget about, once we have the words to describe the world as adults, so i just feel very fortunate as a reader that bechdel had all that preserved in writing and came back to analyze it through poignant cartoons.

one of the panels was familiar to me and i realized it was referenced in "gender queer"!