Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Alison Bechdel

Jun 2007 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 

Winner of the Stonewall Book Award • Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award 

Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. 

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

Ratings and reviews

Book caught my attention when duke university required it, and some religious Christian students consequently boycotted it. I don't go to duke, but I was curious about what the hubbub was about. It's a reasonably done autobiography in graphic novel format, although some of the literary references went over my head. Yes, there were done erotic scenes in there, but just enough to make it interesting and not so much that the book was rendered pornographic.

I'm kinda of embarrass to say like this book even though I stole it from a hospital 'cause I didn't finish reading it and that some nudes were in the book but I'm still okay. You should check this out for people who are 16+ and up.

Definitely would have connected more if I was literature buff, but it hit homes on the topic of growing up with parental issues. It can be repetitive at times, and some graphic pictures so be careful if reading outside your own privacy 😆

About the author

Alison Bechdel’s cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the New York Times bestselling and Time magazine #1 Book of the Year graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical, and Are You My Mother? Most recently, The Secret to Superman Strength was named a New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021. Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow, among many other honors.