Review: Fun Home

When I was in New York for BEA, someone suggested Julie and I see the Broadway show, Fun Home.  He predicted it would win lots of Tony Awards, and he was right, but we weren’t able to get tickets to see it so we decided to do the next best thing and read the book it’s based on.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is a graphic memoir that focuses on Bechdel’s relationship with her father.  The third of three children, and the only girl, Bechdel was born to an English teacher father and an amateur actress mother.  Her father also ran the local funeral home but the town was small so business was slow.  She says,

And indeed, if our family was a sort of artists’ colony, could it not be even more accurately described as a mildly autistic colony?

The family lived in an old house that Bechdel’s father lovingly restored.  The house was his passion and he was very particular about it.  He was cold and distant and obsessed with appearances.  It wasn’t until years later that Bechdel realized he was hiding a secret and that the secret was the one thing they had in common.

Bechdel is a talented artist and obviously very intelligent.  Fun Home is very introspective and somewhat philosophical at times.  I enjoyed the book but admit that she lost me a time or two with her literary references.  It wasn’t too hard to follow, though, since this is a graphic memoir.  Parts of the book are explicit so I wouldn’t recommend it to younger readers.

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