Review of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Didn’t realize the author is a woman before reading the first chapter and looking up her name on Google. Neither did I know she is the one behind Bechdel test (used for identifying gender bias in movies and other works of fiction).
Combining both the genres I like - (auto)biographies and graphic novels, it was a worthy read, similar to the only other autobiographical graphic novel I have read: Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
Tragicomic of a disparate family living in a rural town, immersed with allusions to classical literature, exploring themes of relation between a daughter and her father and their sexual identities, it was a captivating read. Learning that Fun in the title was short for Funeral came as a surprise in the first chapter and set the tone for the rest of the novel.
Although, it confused me a bit in the beginning, I liked the recursive presentation style. Recommended read for the genre.