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A review by documentno_is
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.75
At first I wondered if the telling of this narrative as a comic rather than simply in text wasn’t an act of cheapening what is mostly serious subject matter ( as much as Bechdel suggests this is a comedy I can’t quite grasp any humor outside of comedy in a literary sense.) However, by the third act I had largely adapted to the comic delivery and find myself along for the ride in Bechdel’s musings which are often insightful, damning, and extremely referential. Some references are pervasive, and some are as simple as showing Bechdel masturbating to Delta of Venus by Anais Nin. In this autobiography Bechdel uses Fitzgerald and Camus most often as jumping off points as connections to her father as well as paralleling their stories with her autobiographical source material in theme and literal plot.
Much of the novel is gut-wrenching, the way Bechdel infuses her lived experience with the story of the contrast of her closeted father both enlivened and breaks down the narrative. Bechdel acknowledges that this chronicle of her father’s history is almost all supposed- as in his death she can no longer ask him. One of the most gripping moments throughout was when Bechdel and her father sit in the car on the way to the movie- the reader knows with great sadness (but a complicated sadness of course) that her father will be dead soon but we watch Bechdel’s first attempts to connect to her father in his entirety not just as a parent but as a gay man to a gay daughter. The reader is stricken by the lack of resolution and Bechtel’s comparison of them to characters in Ulysses is apt.
Much of the underlying interest that drew me into this comic was the inclusion of gender discourse in the explicit expression of sexuality and how those agencies relate. Societally we are at a place where we are asked consistently (at least in an academic perspective) to view gender (and its expression) and sexuality through separate but related lenses but sometimes in individuals (such as in the case of Bechdel but also transparently in the case of myself) the actual expression of gender alludes more to sexuality than anything else. Discovering masculinity as a way to signal identity in oppressive spaces is a formative early queer experience and it was validating to read this experience (maybe for the first time) in what is largely a critically acclaimed popular novel. The experience of reading Fun Home was a satisfaction of an eventuality. I’d long heard of Bechdel’s thoughts and seen many excerpts from comics of hers (many of which back in the days of Tumblr) so I was glad to finally engage in material I’ve always existed adjacent to.
Much of the underlying interest that drew me into this comic was the inclusion of gender discourse in the explicit expression of sexuality and how those agencies relate. Societally we are at a place where we are asked consistently (at least in an academic perspective) to view gender (and its expression) and sexuality through separate but related lenses but sometimes in individuals (such as in the case of Bechdel but also transparently in the case of myself) the actual expression of gender alludes more to sexuality than anything else. Discovering masculinity as a way to signal identity in oppressive spaces is a formative early queer experience and it was validating to read this experience (maybe for the first time) in what is largely a critically acclaimed popular novel. The experience of reading Fun Home was a satisfaction of an eventuality. I’d long heard of Bechdel’s thoughts and seen many excerpts from comics of hers (many of which back in the days of Tumblr) so I was glad to finally engage in material I’ve always existed adjacent to.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide