Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is the first ‘Graphic Novel’ I ever read and it was a welcome surprise to encounter it again on my “Women’s Writing” module during my MA at Cardiff University. I’d read comics and the European version, Bande Designee, before, but nothing quite like this. Fun Home, much like Persepolis, is an autobiography filled to the brim with rich detail. Bechdel focuses on her on childhood, growing up with her father Bruce Bechdel, who she paints as both a hardworking, loving father and a tyrannical patriarch. Her coming-of-age story is told in the shadow of his life’s choices; her discovery of her own sexuality is closely linked with the discovery of his hidden homosexuality. In Fun Home, the trauma of the closet spans generations and Bechdel’s unpacking of her guilt and grief is a liberating, therapeutic experience.
The art for this graphic novel is incredibly detailed and was systematically crafted. Bechdel took reference photos for nearly every single panel and redrew them, lending the art both surrealistic and hyper-realistic overtones. Simultaneously, the narration is very literary in tone, with references to James Joyce, the literary scene of 1920s Paris and queer literature, while maintaining a smooth style that is always present but never overbearing.
Alison Bechdel is a critically acclaimed American cartoonist, whose work is taught across a range of disciplines in Higher Education. Some of her best known work is Dykes to Watch Out For, a comic strip published from 1983-2008. If you’d like to dip your toe into Bechdel’s work. a selection of these strips are freely available on her website. Her graphic memoir, Fun Home, was published in 2006 and became a Tony Award winning musical in 2015. The David Wilson Library has several copies available for loan and you can find it here on our catalogue.
