Through this blog, I have realized how much I read biographies and autobiographies. I guess at some point real people became more interesting than fiction. I still read a lot of fiction, but I got into a habit of doing reviews about my favorite books (I don't want to have to say anything bad about a book), and suddenly realized they are almost all nonfiction.
I read a review of this book in one of my most trusted magazines, Bust. I bought it without looking inside first, so when I got home and opened it, I was shocked to see that it was a graphic novel. I shouldn't have been shocked, given the fact that Alison Bechdel is a cartoonist and has been for years and I already knew that. I was a little bummed at first. "A cartoon? What am I going to do with an entire book of cartoons?"
Then I began reading, and I didn't stop reading until I got to the end. I knew Bechdel was capable of making cute cartoons, but I didn't know she was an amazing storyteller, also. And she has quite a story to tell. Her memoir is mostly amusing, but sometimes brutally honest about the troubling parts of her life.
Fun Home revolves mainly around her relationship with her distant, cold father who reveals that he is gay when Bechdel is an adult. The family politics related to this admission are tense and it seems that she was still working through her confusion about her father while writing the memoir. The story begins when she is young, follows her into her teen years when she discovers that she is gay, and ends with her beginning to come to terms not only with her father's homosexuality, but also his suicide.
I wondered how, as a cartoonist, Bechdel would be able to convey the personalities of the characters. I wasn't sure how, with such limited text, I would be able to really understand the dynamics and intricacies of her relationships. She proves that you don't need much text to let your readers get to know the people you are writing about. From the first chapter, I felt like I was in the same room with Bechdel and that I experienced everything she experienced. It helps to have her drawings that can convey emotion through expressions or body language on the page, but her writing is also exceptional.
Despite the dark material she has to work with, including the fact that her father owned a funeral home which he operated out of their home (I couldn't help but picture the Fisher home in Six Feet Under), Bechdel manages to tell a lighthearted story of growing up with the harsh realities we are sometimes faced with.
"Like many fathers, mine could occasionally be prevailed on for a spot of 'Airplane.' As he launched me, my full weight would fall on the pivot point between his feet and my stomach. It was a discomfort well worth the rare physical contact, and certainly worth the moment of perfect balance when I soared above him."
In the end, I decided that I would search for more graphic novels, since they are sort of the same as a short story, only with fun pictures to go along with the story. I hope that Bechdel will continue on the graphic novel path. She has not only perfected the art of being a cartoonist, now she has become an award-winning writer, too.
Alison Bechdel
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