Awesome Book Review Friday: Fun Home (A Family Tragicomic)

This week's book is Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. It's a graphic novel, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a worthwhile read.



Alison Bechdel, the writer and illustrator of "Dyke's to Watch Out For," paints the story of her childhood, more specifically the relationship between herself and her father, while using her childhood home as a frame. She writes in a liner and yet non-liner fashion. Some chapters start at the beginning of one point and then end, while other are turned inside out starting at the end, returning to the beginning and then continuing on back to the end. The result is a beautiful, honest and painful autobiography.

Alison narrates the story as an adult giving new insight into her childhood relationships. It is by no means a fun or easy story to read, as there are clear and painful scars that she carries, but it is an insightful tale of a girl growing up with a closeted and abusive father and becoming a woman who comes to terms with her own sexuality.

It is an important book because it unflinchingly looks at issues many wish childhood didn't include such as sexuality, gender restraints, masturbation, abuse and suicide. Even more importantly it examins the ways we begin to realise as we grow up that our parents are people and have lives and feelings we can not comprehend. Alison Bechdel exposes her difficult childhood and it is a potent reminder that childhood isn't anything like how we depict it. That it is a difficult and scary time, but it is also the time that helped us to become who we are.

This book is a definite read, despite all the sadness it leaves you with the positive message that you will overcome all this, and you will be better for it.