Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic―A New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century!

Seriously one of the best graphic novels. Adult topics -- grief, suicide, sexuality -- all handled with deep thought and introspection.

Amazing read… engaging and absolutely beautiful. Thank you, Alison! I loved this to pieces and will read it again and again.

[Copied from my Goodreads review] You've probably heard of Alison Bechdel thanks to something used in film criticism called the Bechdel Test. For a film to pass the test it need to feature (1) at least two named female characters who (2) talk to each other about (3) something other than a man. Sadly, a lot of movies don't pass this simple three-question test... I had fun reading Fun home: A Family Tragicomic and checking to see if Bechdel's graphic memoir passed her eponymous test. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but that's probably just because the test is meant to check films that feature a lot of dialogue and not graphic novels with a lot of narration. Fun Home tells the story of Bechdel's relationship with her father with plenty of literary allusions (Icarus, The Great Gatsby, what seems to be the entire works of James Joyce). There's also a wide overarching theme of sexuality due to both Alison and her father being gay. The novel is by no means chronological, but as the story continues you revisit scenes with new knowledge. Bruce (Alison's father) was a closeted high school English teacher and funeral director (who worked at a FUNeral HOME, get it?) who obsesses over restoring the Bechdel house to its Victorian glory. Helen (Alison's mother) worked on her dissertation whenever she wasn't acting in local theatrical productions (that often lent themselves to having themes pertinent to Alison or her parents' lives). It's in college that Alison realizes she's a lesbian and shortly after coming out to her parents, she finds out that her parents are getting a divorce because of her own father's homosexualtiy. While Alison and her father could have used their shared queerness to grow closer, fate (or her father's decision to kill himself) prevented that from happening. Just weeks after news of the divorce comes out, Bruce is killed by a Sunbeam delivery truck. The official ruling was after crossing the road, something like a snake in the grass caused him to jump backwards into the path of the truck, but Alison thinks he may have backed into the road on purpose. Many parts of the story focus on Alison wondering if her own coming out may have caused her father to commit suicide. The story and artwork were all very nice. The literary allusions were a little overbearing. Most of them went over my head; I feel like there should be a Cliffs Notes companion pamphlet sold with this to explain most of the connections. What I really want to do now is watch the Broadway musical adaptation of this story. Ever since I saw Sydney Lucas destroy at last year's Tony Awards with "Ring of Keys" I wanted to see what this musical was about. I'm glad I read the novel first but I can't imagine how different everything would be on stage.

I don’t often read graphic novels, but this one looked interesting, and indeed it is fantastic. The title “Fun Home” is ironic of course. It’s a family portrait, vividly portrayed, both humorous and sad. Highly recommended.

Quiz time: Name three things that Alison Bechdel (author/cartoonist behind the fabulous "Dykes To Watch Out For") had in common with Claire, the daughter on "Six Feet Under". Answer: They both had two brothers, their fathers were killed by being hit by a large motor vehicle, and both grew up living in the family funeral home. In Alison's case, the kids shortened the name of the latter to the "Fun Home", which she had made the title of her beautifully illustrated autobiographical work. It deals mostly with her relationship with her father, a fastidious and seemingly cold and distant man who inherited the family funderal business, although he also worked as a high school English teacher. His main passion, however, was restoring and decorating period buildings in their small Pennsylvania town, first the town museum and later a big gothic mansion in which he moved his family during the renovations. Alison's mother was also emotionally distant, and the family members rarely showed any affection toward each other, a burden that Alison dealt with throughout her life. It wasn't until was in college and discovered her lesbianism, and wrote home to tell her parents about it, that she was clued in on a secret his parents had been trying to hide all those years: her father was also gay, and the changing cast of students and other young men he had around him as "helpers" for the renovations were really his lovers. This revelation triggers a new attempt to get closer to him, and she does manage that to an extent, right before his accident, which she believes was really a premeditated act of suicide. A heartfelt and emotionally powerful story, told with great feeling and honesty by a talented author. I had some doubts about dealing with a self-described "tragicomic" (the book is fully illustrated with six panels per each of the 232 pages), but the author is apparently so comfortable with that medium that it allows her to tell her story to its best, and provides amazing detail and clarity to the events she relates. Five stars out of five.

It is difficult to read Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir and not have my impressions be impacted by the huge expectations raised by the MacArthur Fellowship, the legion of five-star reviews and the Tony for the musical adaptation, which I have yet to see. Having grown up on radical cartoonists like R. Crumb, I found Bechdel's graphic novel oddly subdued. The images are often skim-able and rarely arresting. There is a good core narrative: Dad was a closeted perpetual renovator while the author herself comes out as a freshman in college. A natural structure, the stuff of pretty typical memoir. What slowed me down a bit was that the literary references that Bechdel uses as touchstones -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Joyce -- seem musty and an ill-fit for the form (even if they may be historically true). They seem too canonical, even if I appreciate the authors themselves. Even more Nin and Collette would have been welcome, although they, too, are a little fusty, as would have been Henry Miller. What I circle back to is my desire to be deeply moved because it is memoir, and I would say that I was only mildly interested Bechdel, to her credit, is lucid and fluid but I, personally, did not see enough blood on the page. Still, it was enough to send me waddling toward "Are You My Mother?" in which she addresses the problem of many memoirists: how do you maintain a relationships with the parent whose lockbox secret you have revealed? Maybe she'll have an answer for my own relationships with my mother and siblings.

Tragicomic is in the subtitle. And it couldn’t be more accurate. This is such a beautifully written homage to a father taken too soon — and not known nearly well enough. The raw emotion (or lack thereof) is the brutal honesty that makes this piece work. I read this as part of the 2026 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge. I would have not found it otherwise. But now I’m definitely adding more Bechdel to my TBR pile!

I have been a fan of Dykes to Watch Out For, Bechdel's pitch-perfect and depthy comic strip about a group of lesbians and their friends, since high school about twelve years ago, and the arrival of a new work by Bechdel is always an event to be heralded by the same day purchase of her book and my holing up with chocolates to read it all the way through. This one was a little different than the Dykes series, though, because its complexity, both in the drawings and the writing, really deserved a slower-paced reading so I could ponder all of the literary connections she made, and the thoughts and actions that brought up so many interesting feelings and thoughts in me. Bechdel's Dad owned the local Funeral Home (the "Fun Home"), and restored their old home to museum-like glory, obsessively painting, rearranging, and disallowing the personal touches and tastes of his wife and kids in favor of period pieces of furniture and decoration. Between the Fun Home and the restoration, Alison starts to show us the stilted way in which her father is living and forcing them all to live. Why does he need to have such control over his surroundings? It is only when Bechdel is away at college that she discovers lesbianism and realizes that her differences have a name. When she comes out to her parents, she discovers the secret that her parents had been trying to keep under cover for years. Alson and her Dad are both voracious readers, and their stories are shown against a backdrop of classic and other books, which makes the experience of her autobiography (to this point) so much richer. This is a five star hit that I think deserves a lot of attention from people who aren't usually comic readers. The success of Persepolis and a few other mainstream graphic novels have paved the way for this to be a hit. I will certainly be recommending it to all of my book friends.

One of the best books I've read recently, I've fallen in love with Alison Bechdel way of drawing as well as writing. To write such a deep and personal story, drenching the book in a fun yet tragic atmosphere... It's like magic. I really recommend you buy this book, like, right now.

I chose this for my bookclub to read as an example of a graphic novel, none of us ever having read one before. I quickly realised that this was a memoir which made it even more interesting. From the start there are pointers that her life is developing into a tragic tale. We are left in no doubt that her father was a complicated man with many internal torments. The language is rich and luxurious with the great use of some unusual words (one or two even had me looking up definitions). I've now read a few graphic books and think this book is put together brilliantly. The words and pictures both add to each other. There is great detail in the graphics as well, many of which add more to the story than the words can alone. There is much tragedy but it is related in a blackly humorous way (man times crossing back and forward the line between comedy and tragedy). The narrative sections break into four types: the overall story telling, dialogue in speech bubbles, occasional explanatory notes and labels highlighting an element of a drawing. Essentially the book is about a father and daughter relationship. They struggle to come to terms with their differences whilst refusing to acknowledge their obvious similarities. Much of the commonality is around literature and the arts, leading to a few points where the author relies too heavily on literary references. However, I very much liked the reliance on the artistic talents in the family, particularly the mother's acting which allows her to step away from her real world. What strikes me most about this book is the depth of emotion that is written into every, carefully chosen, word. It can be a cliche to say that the process of writing is cathartic but, with this book, that feels appropriate.

É impressionante porque é ao mesmo tempo uma narrativa familiar muito íntima mas uma análise em alguns momentos até bem imparcial de uma pessoa tão próxima como o próprio pai. A arte é incrível, a narrativa é brilhante e se você tem problemas com seu pai você provavelmente vai chorar algumas vezes.

Szybka dostawa. Książka przyszła w idealnym stanie. Sposób pakowania (kartonowe pudełko typu tear off) bardzo mi przypadło do gustu.

FUN HOME ist gewiß kein Comic im Sinne der Funnies, und das FUN im Titel steht als sarkastische Abkürzung für Funeral Home, jenes Bestattungsunternehmen, das der Vater der Ich-Erzählerin Alison neben seiner Tätigkeit als Englischlehrer betreibt. Viel „Fun“ gibt es in Alison Bechdels Autobiographie nicht, und doch gelingt es ihr, die dicht verwobene und literarisch anspielungsreich erzählte Geschichte ihrer Kindheit und Jugend mit milder Ironie und gelegentlichem Humor zu durchwirken. Fun Home ist die Geschichte vom Aufwachsen in einer Familie, in der Zuneigung und Wärme nur selten gezeigt werden und jedes Familienmitglied solipsistisch seinen Weg beschreitet. Alison Bechdel beschreibt nicht nur offen die Ursachen, sondern auch die Folgen, die ein solches Leben in der Seele eines Kindes anrichtet. Der ferne Vater, dessen Zuneigung zu jungen Männern die Familie fast ins Verderben stürzt, die Mutter, die Zuflucht auf der Bühne sucht, und schließlich Alison selbst, die als genaue Beobachterin ihrer selbst und der Familie schon von früh an Tagebuch führt und bald selbst neurotisches Verhalten an den Tag legt. Die gewissenhafte Selbsterforschung, die Fun Home auch ist, geht nicht zuletzt der Frage nach, ob der Tod des Vaters, der vermutlich ein Freitod war, in einer Beziehung zum Coming Out von Alison steht. Besonders anrührend ist die kurze Phase vor dem Tod des Vaters, als es zu einem stillen Einverständnis zwischen Alison und ihm kommt. FUN HOME setzt sich über Genregrenzen mit größter Selbstverständlichkeit hinweg. Der Text hat hohe literarische Qualität, sprachlich und in seinen intertextuellen Bezügen. Ohne dass es aufgesetzt wirkt, verbindet Bechdel ihre Biografie mit literarischen Bezügen zu Camus, Proust und Joyce. Von daher wäre FUN HOME schon als reiner Roman ein Glücksfall. Bechdel, die auch als Zeichnerin großes Potential hat, macht aus ihrer Biografie eine Graphic Novel. Dabei tragen die Bilder massgeblich zur Stimmung bei und ergänzen den Text optimal. Sollte ich das Haar in der Suppe finden, würde ich darauf hinweisen, dass die Gesichtsausdrücke ihrer Protagonisten sich immer sehr ähnlich sehen (aber es ist andererseits ja nicht ungewöhnlich, dass manche Menschen über keine große Mimik verfügen)und dass sie ihren beiden Geschwistern überhaupt keine Beachtung schenkt. Ohne jede Einschränkung ist FUN HOME zu empfehlen: Allen Lesern, die Biografien mögen; allen Lesern, die gut geschriebene Bücher lieben; allen Leser, die sich für Graphic Novels interessieren; allen Lesern, denen das Thema Coming Out nicht unangenehm, vielleicht sogar von Interesse ist. Kurzum: Jeder möge für sich selbst prüfen, warum er dieses Buch nicht schon längst gelesen oder wiedergelesen hat (ach, sie haben es schon gelesen, nur ich habe es erst jetzt gelesen? Oh, ich bitte um Entschuldigung). Bewertung: 6 von 5 stellaren Sternen.