Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Alison Bechdel)
You know, it’s strange how life likes to intersects random themes, making it seem as if you see/hear/read/experience one thing over and over over a period of time, as if something is cropping up everywhere all of the sudden where you didn’t see it before. I first remember this happening when I was a kid and a cousin taught me the meaning of the word “porous,” and suddenly it was all over the TV and grown-up speak for a few days or weeks afterwards. Currently, I seem to be stuck in a cycle of homosexuality.
No really. Listen: I recently read a soft-core lesbian romance, some military big wig got in hot water for calling homosexual acts immoral and I recently attended a function where the Colorado Gay and Lesbian Fund was a main sponsor and was honored. There were more instances of homosexuality being hyperactive on my radar, too, that I can’t think of right now.
Anyway, so imagine my sense of coincidence and confluence when I opened this book, which got onto my list thanks to a review in Time magazine. It is the tale of a young girl, a lesbian, coming to grips with herself and her strange, dysfunctional family who happen to run a small-town funeral home. (I know, it’s all very Six Feet Under.) The funeral home = the FUN home. It was just all too ironic given the strange theme of gay-ness permeating my atmosphere recently. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Really.)
There was also something incredibly unique about this book, however: the fact that it is not only words but illustrations. In fact, it reads like a comic book from pane to pane with detailed black and white ink illustrations. I love something that blows my expectations out of the water like that and the technique was a breath of fresh air, as were the drawings, which were neither the overly masculinized comic stereotype (think large breasts, bulging pecs and muzzle flashes) or all sappy and girly comic stereotype (think puppies and Disney cartoons). They were realistic, even lewd or awkward when necessary, and the comic style made the book read incredibly fast.
Allison Bechdel tells a very interesting story using this method, the story of her life in fact. And despite my introduction, homosexuality is not its only theme or value. There’s also the power of family and of genetics, the struggle of the individual to choose and strive toward their own future, the universal themes of literature in everyday life and the struggle to make sense of the past, a struggle that is not as neat and tidy as the frames of a comic book. If your interested in Bechdel, you can check out her work via the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars - A book club selection for vacation reading
Biography, Non-Fiction |