Fun Home: A Family TragicomicA fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive. |
Contents
OLD FATHER OLD ARTIFICER | 1 |
A HAPPY DEATH | 25 |
THAT OLD CATASTROPHE | 55 |
IN THE SHADOW OF YOUNG GIRLS IN FLOWER | 87 |
THE CANARYCOLORED CARAVAN OF DEATH | 121 |
THE IDEAL HUSBAND | 151 |
THE ANTIHEROS JOURNEY | 187 |
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Common terms and phrases
adidas AFTERNOON Alison Bechdel's ARTIST BACK BALD EAGLE MOUNTAIN BECHDEL FUNERAL HOME Beech Creek BEGAN BOOK Brady Bunch BROTHERS BRUCE ALLEN BECHDEL BULLPEN CALLED CAMUS CLASS COLETTE COLLEGE COLOR COURSE DAD'S DEATH DIARY DIED EMOTION ENGLISH FACT FAMILY FATHER FITZGERALD FLOWERS FRIENDS FRONT Fun Home GARDEN GATSBY GIRL GOTHIC REVIVAL GRYGLEWICZ HAIR HELEN HOMOSEXUAL HOUSE IDEAL HUSBAND JOAN JOYCE'S KATE MILLETT KNEW KNOW KODAK SAFETY LATER LESBIAN LETTER LIBRARY LILACS LITTLE LIVED LOOK MARRIED memoir MOTHER MYTH OF SISYPHUS NEVER NIGHT NUMBER ODYSSEUS OKAY OSCAR WILDE PARENTS PERHAPS PHOTO PLATEAU PLAY PORTRAIT PROUST queer READ REALIZED ROOM SCHOOL SEEMED SEXUAL SISYPHUS SOON STEPHEN AND BLOOM STORY STREET SUMMER Sunbeam SUNBEAM BREAD SYLVIA BEACH TAKE TELL THERE'S THINGS THINK THOUGHTS TOOK TREES ULYSSES VELVET WANT watched Wayside Gardens WEDNESDAY WEEK WILDE WORD YORK YOUNG Zelda