I'm always on the lookout for good graphic memoirs. If you liked Persepolis and Maus, then this is what you need to read next. This one takes place in Pennsylvania and is by the author of the Dykes to Watch Out For series. It's the honest, witty, and beautifully rendered story of a dysfunctional family and Alison's survival and sexual awakening. I loved the literary allusions (even the ones that were far above my head) and the richness with which Bechdel brings the setting to life (small northern Appalachia town; Gothic revival house; Bechdel family funeral home) and situates her story within that world. And if you know other graphic memoirs I should read, please tell me about them...
Publisher Mariner Books
Publication Date 2007-06-05
Section Graphic Novels / All Staff Suggestions / Archived Staff Suggestions / Julia M.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780618871711
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER
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 •
Nominated for the GLAAD Media 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.
