Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

"Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel is a graphic memoir (like a graphic novel, but it's a memoir--the phrase kind of confuses my brain so I thought it would be worth the explanation) about the early life of Alison Bechdel, a woman I only knew of because of the Bechdel Test (it is unclear if she invented it or just defined it, but I'm not going to worry about it too much).

Through images drawn by cartoonist Bechdel we learn the story of her childhood in a home that her father obsessively restored to its former glory and the funeral home where he worked part-time. We watch Bechdel grow up in a small Pennsylvania town, we see her go to college and fully realize that she is a lesbian, we see the stories of her childhood that might have made her sexuality clear earlier, if only she knew how to understand her own feelings, and we learn how Alison herself learned that her father was gay, and that all this time they were exactly alike... and all this time they were nothing alike.

This book was lovely to read. The story was engaging and beautiful, and the pictures only served to make it more engaging and more beautiful. And it reminds us that our stories are not so solitary that they can fully exist without the stories of those around us. Alison's story cannot exist as it does without her fathers story, and his story cannot exist without hers.

This book also is the basis of the musical also named "Fun Home", which I finally got around to listening to as I wrote this blog post. I loved it and it's worth a listen if you enjoy musicals :)

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in queer stories, it's lovely, and the lesbian doesn't die at the end! It was a very quick read. And I really loved the illustration style, Bechdel is both an excellent story teller and an excellent artist. Yay good cartoonists! I can't wait to find more of her cartoons and I hope to love them as much as I loved this book.

XO, Ellen