Skip to main content

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

 Fun Home is the somewhat depressing memoir-cum-analysis of cartoonist Alison Bechdel's childhood and teenage life, linking her own discovery of her sexual identity with the death of her father and the subsequent revelations of his sexuality.

Contradiction and ignorance lie at the heart of this story.  Bechdel's childhood is portrayed as the product of a cold and loveless marriage, where the children are treated more as school pupils and free labour than beloved offspring.  Yet Bechdel and her siblings for the most part come across as happy and content with their lives - at least until the confusion of puberty and sex rears its head in the later years. 

The narrative revolves around the death of Bechdel's father - hit by a truck whilst crossing the road from a house he was renovating - which she adamantly maintains throughout the story was an un-confessed suicide driven by his secret homosexuality (or bisexuality - he never articulates any specifics) in their local small-town community.  Bechdel continuously questions whether coincidences are in fact omens or whether she find patterns in her father's struggles and her own coming out - yet rarely seriously considers her father's death to be a genuine accident.  This attempt to place meaning on events and people within her life is a constant thread throughout the book.

Perhaps we should shy away from trying to analyse her thoughts too much - in several scenes she is dismissive of her English Literature teachers and fellow students attempting to impose meaning on classic books that are of their own invention, never considering that the author's works could be taken at face value. 

The constant use of a narrative voice, rather than relying on world balloons, emphasises the reminiscence of autobiography and critical analysis of her relationships.  This is compounded by the inclusion of excerpts from her childhood diary at points (including them as drawn reproductions of the original entries), which makes for an odd echo chamber as she ponders now her pondering of then.

Her narrative choice to reveal the death of her father at the beginning of the story certainly helps the introspective nature of the story, rather than leaving it as a cheap shock to conclude the comic.  Indeed, the story itself if more about the search for answers than a straightforward autobiographical tale.  Chronologically things jump from Bechdel's young childhood, to her coming out at college, back again, and all points in between.  In doing so it feels like a much more realistic recollection of her life - when we think back to our childhood there are moments that jump from our memory, but rarely are these recalled is strictly chronological order.  It is a technique that can come off as trying to be clever, but in Fun Home it feels natural and essential to the flow of the story.

Artistically Bechdel's thin wiry line drawings recall illustrations from children's story books, adding to the feel of the comic as a memory from her (and our) youth.  Her lack of depth and shade to most panels forces the characters to the foreground and makes you pay attention to every panel - as if she is determined not be analysed for subtle nods and winks, bur rather present heart-on-sleeve honesty (which she laments the absence of in her family home).  Her style is more akin to a newspaper comic strip (Peanuts springs to mind, especially with her character's hair) and so feels somewhat out of place in a longer form story such as the graphic novel.  This contributes to the alienation Bechdel experiences throughout her childhood and college life.

Having never personally experienced the questions or secrets of my sexuality that Bechdel and her father did I'm not best placed to say whether Fun Home will find its way into the pantheon of reassuring and educating gay literature that she finds comfort in whist at college.  What I can say however is that Fun Home is a touching, complex, tale of personal secrets and awkward family relationships that enthrals, and at times saddens, the reader whilst disarming them with simple but charming and direct artwork.   


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sub-Mariner: The Depths

One big trick I think Marvel is constantly guilty of missing is that they’ve created this huge and popular universe, filled with vibrant characters and a rich history, yet they only really use it to tell superhero stories.   Sub Mariner: The Depths , originally published in five parts under the Marvel Knights banner in 2009, is a rare exception. This claustrophobic psychological thriller, written by Peter Milligan with art by Esad Ribic, is loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (which also served as the basis for the film Apocalypse Now ), and is one of Marvel’s best comics in recent years.   The tale is a fantastic little examination of what it must be like to live in the Marvel universe, however unlike Kurt Busiek’s Marvels which tackled the same issue, The Depths  is more about what we don’t see than what we do. Set in an art deco Marvel universe before the advent of the super-heroes, Dr Randolph Stein - scientist and ‘profession

The Eyes of the Cat - Jodorowsky and Mœbius

    Simplicity, minimalism, and restraint, are not usually words you would associate with a comic written by Alexandro Jodorowsky.  The man who usually fills each page of his sci-fi adventures with more ideas than most writers come up with in a lifetime, on this occasion, managed to pare it down to just one.  The Eyes of the Cat , his very first work with artist Mœbius, allows the drawing space and time to breath, and the result is much more akin to Mœbius' solo work than their other collaborations (most famously The Incal ). The narrative is straightforward enough; in some future or alien city an eagle soars above the streets looking for a cat at the behest of a blind master, to whom it then returns to with the titular 'eyes of the cat'.  What makes this work stand out is how this tale is presented.  The art and story split into two separate parts; on the left hand pages is a simple silhouetted image of the master in the window, taking up perhaps a third of the page (and i