Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Fun Home is the autobiography of Alison Bechdel, from birth to young adulthood, in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Told in a graphic novel format, Bechdel examines her relationship with her parents and the events that shaped herself and her family.  Her father, a high school English teacher and funeral home director, is a cold, often angry man who is obsessed with perfectly restoring the family’s Victorian mansion home.  Her mother, a talented pianist and local actress, closes herself off from her family in order to cope with her unhappy marriage. When Bechdel realizes in college that she is a lesbian, she comes out to her parents and they begin to tell her some difficult facts about her father.  She learns that her father is a closeted gay man who has had affairs with men throughout his marriage.  She also learns that he has had affairs with some of the teenage boys he teaches at the high school.  While Bechdel is still dealing with the emotional impact of her own coming out and her father's painful secrets, her father is killed in an apparent suicide. Bechdel is left to cope with the emotional fallout of her father’s life and death, and to try to understand her father, her family, and herself with these new truths.

This book is recommended for older, mature young adults in a public or school library. The book contains some very dark subject matter and a few sexually-explicit images that are not appropriate for younger, more immature young adults. This book is well-written and entertaining, and the graphic novel format helps to further engage the reader in the story. The author expertly weaves her story with some of the great classics of literature, encouraging a new generation of readers to discover these books for themselves. At times funny and sad, the book navigates the issues of family, childhood, coming of age, and self-discovery with honesty, humor, and insight.

Awards

2006 Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
2007 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work
2007 Stonewall Book Award's Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award

Learn More

Learn more about Alison Bechdel on her website or by following her blog.  If you liked Fun Home, you might also like her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For.

Watch Bechdel discuss the process of writing and illustrating Fun Home:

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Print.
978-0618477944; Hardback; $20.00; 232 pages

Also available in paperback and ebook formats.