Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2006)

 

Published in 2006, and later adapted for a Broadway show, there is so much to love about this book -- it is as hilarious as it is tragic. The story is a surprisingly real coming-of-age tale told and drawn with heart and soul.

 

Fun Home is set in 1970s rural Pennsylvania and focuses especially on Alison Bechdel's father, who is an English teacher, funeral (hence "fun") home director, and is obsessed with decorating the large Victorian house in which they live. The story weaves a fascinating literary thread through what Alison and her father are reading and how this parallels their lives. This blurring of memoir and literature is exciting, especially at the end when she introduces James Joyce's Ulysses. Bechdel writes, "Ulysses, of course, was banned for many years by people who found its honesty obscene." (Page 228.)

 

The sad end to her father's life is redeemed by his daughter's telling of this story in truth and love.

 

I recommend this memoir for mature readers 18 and up but not if you are squeamish about homosexuality.