I live an hour away from Beech Creek, Alison Bechdel's tiny hometown and the setting for much of her graphic memoir Fun Home. I've always found the area oppressive: dark, looming mountains casting perpetual shadows on impoverished, dying valley towns. But after reading Fun Home, I revisited Beech Creek, to see Bechdel's childhood home and the grave of her father Bruce, and to remind myself of how cruelly ironic life can be.

Bruce Bechdel, a man who loves literature (in his early days he identified with F. Scott Fitzgerald; in his final days he reads Proust), an aesthete with a taste for the baroque detail of the Victorian era, and a creative and versatile designer of interior and exterior landscapes, is born and lives in rural central Pennsylvania, running the family funeral home and teaching at the local high school. He never quite fits in. Always sun-tanned and exquisitely dressed (no plaid hunter's shirts or chewing tobacco for him), persnickety and a bit prissy, but at the same time speaking with a back-country twang, Bruce seems uncannily out of place in Beech Creek.

And he's a closeted gay man, who has occasional affairs on the side and otherwise sublimates his repressed sexuality by obsessively restoring the Victorian-era house in which Alison grew up. The tension of his closeted life makes him aloof, prone to violent temper tantrums, controlling, and sometimes cruel to both wife and children.

Alison's Bechdel's memoir of him, and the way in which her own identity both became the inverse of his and yet in many respects parallels his, is a sophisticated narrative that underscores just how complex personal identity is. Alison is who she is, just as her father was who he was, because of the convergence of Beech Creek, sexuality, alienation, fun, repression, the need to be creative, the yearning for affection, the factuality of history and the re-creation of memory. There's no formulaic happy ending here, no artificial structuring to make more sense of the relationship between herself and her father than there really was. Instead, what the reader is offered is a profound, sensitive, bittersweet effort to explore memory in search of identity--an effort which throughout is punctuated by Bechdel's references to both Proust and James Joyce--and an appreciation for the ironies of fate which make us who we become.

Other reviewers have mentioned that they read the memoir at one setting. I found it so intense that I could only take it in small portions, and even then I sometimes felt overwhelmed. For in sharing her own identity-forming memories with us, she invites us to plumb more deeply into our own. And both exercises, although potentially liberating, can also be harrowing.

I knew she was a cartoonist but did not know the memoir would be in cartoon form. It was reasonably well written but her family members just didn't come alive for me.
As a lesbian, I found it especially disapointing to read about yet another woman who felt like she had come home when she put on her father's clothes.

An absolutely brilliant, hard to put down and very moving story. I go back to it often and think about it always. Beautiful, witty, hilarious.

The title had the effect of putting me off from buying this. Bechdel wasn't someone I was familiar with, so my suspicions of an arch, disgruntled rant were forefront, and now fortunately unfounded. Having read it twice, and doubtless will again, I can't ever before recall so many reviews stuffed onto/into the covers of one book, and all of them so closely matching my own impressions. As an exploration of a father/daughter relationship, Fun Home uses the tack of revisiting telling moments with underlying illuminations. Steeped as Bechdel and her aloof father were in literature (here specifically Proust, Wilde, and Joyce) she employs the ideas of shared authors to assist in the formulation of a familial bond, separate from, yet not ignoring her two younger brothers and their resolute, if somewhat mysterious, mother.

The title had the effect of putting me off from buying this. Bechdel wasn't someone I was familiar with, so my suspicions of an arch, disgruntled rant were forefront, and now fortunately unfounded. Having read it twice, and doubtless will again, I can't ever before recall so many reviews stuffed onto/into the covers of one book, and all of them so closely matching my own impressions. As an exploration of a father/daughter relationship, Fun Home uses the tack of revisiting telling moments with underlying illuminations. Steeped as Bechdel and her aloof father were in literature (here specifically Proust, Wilde, and Joyce) she employs the ideas of shared authors to assist in the formulation of a familial bond. The generous inclusion of her two younger brothers and their resolute, if somewhat mysterious, mother is evidence of an empathetic nature in fine form.

The subtitle - A Family Tragicomic - had the effect of putting me off from buying this. Bechdel wasn't someone I was familiar with, so my suspicions of an arch, disgruntled rant were forefront, and now fortunately unfounded. Having read it twice, and doubtless again, I can't ever before recall so many reviews stuffed onto/into the covers of one book, and all of them so closely matching my own impressions. As an exploration of a father/daughter relationship, Fun Home doesn't merely run from beginning to end, but uses the tack of revisiting telling moments with underlying illuminations. Steeped as Bechdel and her aloof father were in literature (here specifically Proust, Wilde, and Joyce) she employs the ideas of shared authors to assist in the formulation of a familial bond. The generous inclusion of her two younger brothers and their resolute, if somewhat mysterious, mother is further evidence of Bechdel's willingness to understand the whole.

The subtitle - A Family Tragicomic - had the effect of putting me off from buying this. Bechdel wasn't someone I was familiar with, so my suspicions of an arch, disgruntled rant were forefront, and now fortunately unfounded. Having read it twice, and doubtless again, I can't ever before recall so many reviews stuffed onto and into the covers of one book, and all of them so closely matching my own impressions. As an exploration of a father/daughter relationship, Fun Home doesn't merely run from beginning to end, but uses the tack of revisiting telling moments with underlying illuminations. Steeped as Bechdel and her aloof father were in literature (here specifically Proust, Wilde, and Joyce) she employs the ideas of shared authors to assist in the formulation of a familial bond. A thorough and thoughtful mind was necessary for weaving together, so accessibly, an homage to mixed emotions such as this, the generous inclusion of her two younger brothers and their resolute and somewhat mysterious mother further evidence of a benevolent nature working through the discomforts.

The subtitle - A Family Tragicomic - had the effect of putting me off from buying this. Bechdel wasn't someone I was familiar with, so my suspicions of an arch, disgruntled rant were forefront, and now fortunately unfounded. Having read it twice, and doubtless again, I can't ever before recall so many reviews stuffed onto and into the covers of one book, and all of them so closely matching my own impressions. As an exploration of a father/daughter relationship, Fun Home doesn't run along a straight timeline, but uses the tack of introducing some telling moment and thereafter returning to reveal other, strategic illuminations underlying it. Steeped as Bechdel and her aloof father were in literature (here specifically Proust, Wilde, and Joyce) she employs the ideas of shared authors to assist in the formulation of a familial bond. A thorough and thoughtful mind was necessary for weaving together, so accessibly, a homage of mixed emotions such as this, the generous inclusion of her two younger brothers and their resolute mother further evidence of a benevolent nature working through the unease.

The subtitle - A Family Tragicomic - had the effect of putting me off from buying this, despite the glowing reviews. Bechdel wasn't someone I was familiar with, so my suspicions of an arch, disgruntled rant were forefront, and fortunately unfounded. Having now read it twice, and doubtless again, I can't ever before recall so many reviews stuffed onto and into the covers of one book, and all of them so closely matching my own impressions. As an exploration of a father/daughter relationship, Fun Home doesn't run along a straight timeline, but uses the tack of introducing some telling moment and thereafter returning to reveal other, strategic illuminations underlying it. Steeped as Bechdel and her aloof father were in literature (notably Proust, Wilde, and Joyce) she employs the writings of shared authors to formulate a connective tissue between them. A thorough and thoughtful mind was necessary for weaving together, so accessibly, a homage of mixed emotions such as this, the generous inclusion of her two younger brothers and their resolute mother further evidence of a benevolent nature working within the unease.

Perhaps it is inevitable that I'd fall for this book, given that I'm a fan of comics --Art Speigelman, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Megan Kelso, Gilbert & Jamie Hernandez... and of course Alison Bechdel, whose Dykes to Watch Out For strip I've followed for a long time. Compared to that strip, this book has a more gentle pace and wry wit. It says as much as written biographies in a surprisingly compact way. The ending disappointed some, but surely real life is harder than fiction to tie up in a tidy bow.

I cannot praise this graphic novel enough. I was so impressed with way Bechdel wove her memoir together, building from one memory into the next. At first I found some of her writing potentially pretentious, something I have seen in the writings of other memoirs where the author wants the reader to know how much they know, to be impressed with the use of precise vocubulary, and the manipulation of time to unfold a story. Usually, these don't work because they are not used effectively so much as for effect. Bechdel, however, has no pretense. Vulnerable and transparent, how she tells her personal story is so powerful it breaks your heart and inspires you soul all at the same time. Her use of the same image, with a slightly different perspective, is not merely clever but perfection. If I could beg her to write about her relationship with her mother, I would. But what would be the point? Then I would want to know more about her relationships with her siblings, with her lovers, with her neighbors. I could never have enough. It is enough to hope for more.

this is a GLORIOUS book, with wonderful drawings, elegant English, and a story which--no matter how different it is from your own---you will immediately identify with. What are you waiting for?

Fun Home is an autobiographical comic written in a nuanced, literary style, intermingling the stories of the author's coming to grips with her sexual identity and her closeted father's untimely death. Bechdel, author of Dykes to Watch Out For, draws in a style that meshes comfortably with her narrative, neither outshining nor underwhelming it. To consider this comic simple autobiography, however, would be a disservice. Through its pages one sees the trials and tribulations suffered by generations of queer America, both in the cities and in the small towns of America.

This novel will appeal to all readers who enjoy thoughtful literature. Bechdel's work is clever, emotionally gripping in a way that moves beyond simple feelings such as joy or anger and into the strange sensations (or lack thereof) that arise at life's crossroads. She includes many snippets of other authors' works when the characters are reading, using the texts to replicate their various epiphanies, from Camus' The Stranger to Pauline Reage's The Story of O.

I read through Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel in one sitting, steamrolling through it like it was my job.

This book is categorized as a graphic novel, and I see it completely that way. It's very wordy, and Bechdel's style is spare, though there are thoughtful details that stick out: wrinkles on her parents' faces; exact passages from books and plays; the awnings of her childhood home. She kept a journal when young, and this book seems almost more like a review of that journal, fleshing the words out with remembered images and feelings.

Her use of text as an image is interesting, and though it's a true reflection of her past, I felt it a little overused. Her journal entries, illustrated, are an example, her childish scrawls being overcome by OCD symbols and slashes being important but not so much so that every little bit had to be illustrated. Her father and she had their best correspondences through letters, and she illustrates both his profuse knowledge about the books she was reading and also some of his old love letters to her mother when he was in the army. So much illutrated text--I tended to simply skim over them and not read their handwritten messages.

I liked the photographs that she drew in, however. The style of drawing changes in these photographs, looking more realistic, as if trying to say something about the difference between truth and illusion when these pictures were taken, and are interestingly juxtaposed with her comical hand holding them.

All right, enough essay-writing. I thought that the characterizations of her mother and father were brilliant, though at the expense of the rest of her family and ultimately of the author/narrator herself. You get the sense that she's somewhat of an aloof personality, but how much of that carries over after the funeral and into the rest of her life is unknown.

The book is less of a catharsis and more of a realization of how she was a mirror image of her father, a theme that resonates with me quite strongly.

Whether or not you are a comic lover, you can enjoy this novel. There aren't any of those comical tropes of 'bam!' or 'single bound!', or even much digression from standard, square panels, but the subject matter is so compelling that you won't even care. This is not an action or comedy; the nearest comparison that a non-geek might know is Maus by Art Spiegelman, though the subject matter of course is not so apocalyptic.

On the other hand, if you love action-packed stuff, then this might not be for you. Though there are a few pages that would push a movie into R-rated territory, there isn't any violence or much foul language--systemic of a world where Bechdel grew up, not knowing the 'seedy' things that her father did yet knowing that there was some sort of undercurrent.

I gave this book 5 stars, despite my nitpicking, because this is a seriously good piece of work that everyone should read. It's a great way to transition from the written word to the graphic novel, as it doesn't rely too heavily on comic tropes. If you like Maus, you'll love this one.

When your father is an exacting home renovator, meticulous interior decorator, local mortician, high shcool English teacher, and closeted homosexual, who you suspect likely had sexual relations with adolescent boys - if you're like most autobiopic authors these days, then you'd probably write your own private hyperbolic "Running With Scissors," throwing everything up against the wall, and crudely splattering your immediate family's history across the pages of your tunnel-visioned, self-promoting, and sensational memoir. But Alison Bechdel is neither an ordinary author nor a poorly educated one. She has both an independently crafted intellect and a capable library of classic literary sources and themes. She does not choose to focus on minutia or overly far-reaching causalities. Her first autobiography is a corncopia of expertly-coordinated art forms, carved into a concise, gravitational, and enlightening narrative.

I highly recommend not only buying and reading this book, but I also encourage studying Bechdel's perspectives, reasoning connections, and causal theories.

This book is a modern heroic quest to find meanings, understandings, and truths in intimate behaviors, wants, and relationships.

Many authors focus on picturesquely and emotionally describing the abnormalities of their past. Bechdel is fully capable of parroting those common abilities. But her aims are further reaching and more well-intended than simply trying for accurate multi-sensory recollection. She goes happily beyond and effectively reveals the origins of some of her creative forces. She sympathetically and honestly portrays the cultural, familial, and private paradoxes that likely disabled so many of her (and our) loved ones who are not ordinary in their desires.

Anyone who incorrectly thinks women can't be visually-centric need only read this book. Bechdel's visual memory is both astounding and rewarding for the rest of us. And her other areas of memory, from smells to feelings to current events to literary quotes in her educational development are indicative of an artist who tries to consider, evaluate, and remember more than most people do. She does not filter her memories through rose colored glasses, but she does effectively step outside status quo lenses to make her own evaluations and portrayals.

Reading some of the recent popular homosexual memoirs, a person might think homosexuals are NOT predominantly driven by love or desire, but rather driven by poor experiences, revenge, whistleblowing, or hatred. Where most authors blame their family and past relationships for their own problems, Bechdel does not. She sees more perspectives and she is better educated than most. Bechdel chooses to not simply blame others for her past OCD, inabilities, and abnormalities, even while she illustrates capably the environment in which those conditions arose.

The title "Fun Home" probably has many intended meanings, like Jeannette Wells memoir entitled "The Glass Castle" has many transparent meanings. Both memoirs speak of fun times, but I think Bechdel sees even more of the good intentions in her father's "mad" pursuits than Wells perceived. Both fathers showed flashes of brilliance mixed with Achilles Heels so notorious, it's a wonder they could walk at all sometimes. And in Wells' defense, at least Bechdel's father was better read and less often intoxicated.

The title "Fun Home" is not singularly intended with negative or sarcastic connotations. Alison Bechdel shows us how she had fun growing up, as much fun as a person could have dealing with the ever present spoken and unspoken, addressed and unaddressed familial conflicts constantly battling in her home.

I think it would be insufficent to call this a young woman's "coming of age" book. It may be more accurate to say this book is about a family coming of age. And I think the publication of this beautiful story is an assertive exercise in encouraging societal sensibilities to come of age.

Bechdel does not seek to excuse all of her father's behaviors, but rather to help others understand them. She wants more people to understand what can happen to very intelligent and talented people when they are incorrectly trained to believe that some of their primary drives and loves are sinful, shameful, or should be killed or hidden. She writes:

"I suppose a lifetime spent hiding one's erotic truth could have a cummulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death. Ulysses, of course, was banned for many years by people who found its honesty obscene."

I felt pretty good that I was able to not cry while reading the book. But after I read the last page, the tears just flowed.

I didn't know that graphic novels could be so smart. I felt smarter after reading this one, and also very moved by a sad story. This book doesn't have good guys and bad guys, which is how you know it's not a typical comic.

In addition to a great tale, the art is so beautiful. What a tremendous book.

This memoir could have been called "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" but that title is taken. Nevertheless, that is the most apt description for Fun Home that I can think of. Alison Bechdel's spare prose and simple, black-and-white line drawings convey an emotional complexity that will push buttons for many, if not all, readers because in one way or another most of us suffered childhoods that tested our abilities to make sense of the senseless.

My own childhood was nothing like Bechdel's, yet at the same time it was exactly like hers. All of the details are different, while all of the feelings are the same. I would say that at the heart of Fun Home lies Bechdel's need to justify to herself the love she felt (and continues to feel) for a father who was too wrapped up in his own identity conflicts to even acknowledge, much less help address, his child's. And who was too weak even to live out his full two score and seven, taking his life sometime in his 40s when Bechdel was just out of college.

Bechdel's contempt for her father is apparent, as is her love. She is at once angry and admiring, cynical about his motives and proud of his accomplishments. Her ambivalence is nearly overwhelming, and something that I suspect many of us share in relation to our parents. In the end, I believe, the lucky ones among us come to some inner accommodation wherein we are able to forgive our parents for their lapses, even those that are quite literally sinful, and honor the things they were able to do that live on in our hearts and minds after they are gone.

Fun Home is a beautiful book whose drawings aid the reader's imagination in fleshing out details of an early life that was deeply felt and well lived. I highly recommend it.

I just want to say, I had never read Alison Bechdel before I read a review of this book in Bitch Magazine. I picked it up and am now a huge fan of hers. This book is incredibly well thought-out and I think that many people will see their own story reflected in hers in that, as a child (as a human for that matter), you see your parents as end-all, be-all, endlessly fascinating human beings...almost as if they were Adam and Eve...It's such a strange paradox in that they existed for a long time before you did, they they do or don't take care of you, that no matter what the status, everyone has parents...you pore over seeminly innocuous details of their lives searching for some "truth", you compare them favorably and unfavorably to other people's parents...you put together pieces of the puzzle for yourself where there is no information...but at the end of the day, they are just people who make mistakes, no more, no less. This story is mainly about a daughter's fascination with her father and his life/secrets, an attempt to get to the root of a completely tragic experience and a reconciliation with herself and her own grief and (misplaced) guilt.

I met Alison at the NYC Comic Con and she was pretty fascinating herself. This book has been a obvious victory for her as well as a labor of love and a harrowing journey. Once I finished this book, I bought the DTWOF books and was bowled over. It's a twenty year long soap opera with aging characters, intricate story lines, whip-smart commentary on social, governmental and civil rights issues, and funny too boot.

This was one of the most engaging and crushingly sad books I've ever read. Most authors are unable to write about agonizing personal history without being mawkish or manipulative. But Bechdel tells a raw and gripping story with not a hint of cheap sentimentality.

Jennifer Parello, author of Dateland

About: Graphic novel about the author's relationship with her father.

Pros: I don't usually read graphic novels but read about this one in a "Best Graphic Novels" article in Booklist (at least I think it was Booklist) and thought it sounded interesting so I checked it out.
It did not disappoint. Interesting story, wonderful art.

Cons: This isn't really a con, but since graphic novels might be associated with the kid crowd, this one tends toward an older audience

Grade: A

It's hard to know what to say about this book.

There's something about it that combines accessibility with a lot of raw power in a way that seems to be very unusual to me. I don't know if that's because of the graphic format, or if it's because Bechdel is just someone who can pull if off. But it packs the kind of punch that usually comes from much denser books. On that technical level, it seems somewhat wonderful, even if that's an odd word to attach to this story.

In any event, for me it was quick and easy to read, and almost overwhelmingly sad. The last page is kind of beautiful and kind of awful.

It's a very smart book, most obviously so in its literary references, but more significantly in its analysis of the events it describes. And I think it's a kind book. Not in a syrupy way, or in a superficial hollywood ending way. It's kind in the sense that Bechdel seems to have really dealt with her father as he was, and she loves him. Proust's narrator taught his mother not to value kindness above all other things in literature, but I'm not as bright as he was, and kindness matters more to me than it probably should. The last panel on the last page is important.

I can offer to criticisms, one trivial, the other less so. The trivial one is that this book perpetrates the myth that Proust is too hard for normal people to read. It's not true, everyone can and should read Proust. He's a lot easier than Joyce. So don't let anyone tell you that you're too dumb to read Proust. You're not.

The more substantive criticism is a reaction of a friend, who said that he felt that Bechdel's father's privacy has been invaded unfairly. That didn't occur to me as I was reading the book, but now that he's mentioned it it's hard to dismiss out of hand.

I told my friend that I thought Bechdel had the right to tell her own story, and that this is her story, even if its his as well. And I believe that. But this is pretty raw stuff, and I can see how some people would be uncomfortable.

It's pretty great. Not terribly similar to the comic strip -- it's a lot deeper, and a lot scarier. But it's pretty great.

I have never read a graphic novel before, and I'm so glad that I took the chance on this one. It's a great achievement by Bechdel.

Bechdel's Fun Home is an extraordinary memoir--all the more if one reflects on how much she's grown as an artist since she began Dykes to Watch Out For. This is simultaneously the story of her coming of age and her father's closeted life. It is also a highly literary memoir of reading, full of the kind of literary allusions that the wunderkind author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics tried to pull off but couldn't. Not a single reference is wasted, each allusion illustrates what it means to be shaped by a life of books, to find meaning and desire in them. And not a frame is wasted. Readers should spend time on the composition and content of each frame in the text. Don't miss this one. If you haven't yet realized what the graphic novel can be, check this one out. You'll be a convert.

My general complaint with comics and graphic novels is that great art or simply the fact that it is a visual medium hides the often weak writing associated with it. The comic boom of the 1990's and its sudden decline is a perfect example of the mass-produced and clone-like quality that comics took and the backlash of fans and readers. Luckily, the past few years has seen a growing movement of people to comic book stores and of people buying up graphic novels to the point where they now occupy sections in major bookstores. Bechdel's "Fun Home" is a perfect example as to why comics are cool to read (and why people like me don't have to hide our love of them). Using diary entries from her childhood, Bechdel really exposes her formative years and how difficult they were in a family life that was less than ideal. Her father continously cheated on her mother with boys with young boys he would pick up any which way, they lived in a house that was a throwback to another era, and the normal intimacies associated with family such as touch and other expressions of intimacy were absent. Bechdel explores her relationship with her father and the gender-flip that takes place as she ages and comes to the realization she is a lesbian. The narrative moves back and forth and with each pass, readers are given more details into the daughter-father relationship. The tragicomic appelatiion is appropriate as questions surrounding her father's death add an even sadder feel to the story. Bechdel's artwork fits extremely well with the story and her pacing is reminiscent of some of my other favorite writer/artists such as Alex Robinson and Derek Kirk Kim. What really stands out for me is her literary achievements within the text and the way she draws on so much "stuff" out of legends and fiction. I read this in one sitting and plan to do so again in the next day or so. Great work that should not be missed.

I have to agree with Time Magazine...this is the best book (in any genre) of 2006 and the best paperback of 2007! Alison Bechdel is a genius!

Clearly one of the best memoirs or graphic novels. It's literate without being too pretentious, but it did make me reach for the dictionary a couple times. Alison's story and her memories and musings on her father, hometown, college life, and books make each page a pleasure. Best book I've read in the past year.

I have seen this book for a while at a local book store. I finally bought the book and in one sitting read the whole thing. This is the best memoir I have read in a long time. Allison Bechdel has created something very special. The book focuses in her relationship with her fathe and the similarites that come about after her father's death. This is a book I will and would recommend to anyone. As time passes this is a book I will re=read again and again. Thoughtful, honest, exhilerating.

"Graphic novels" come with a certain amount of baggage--there seems to be a subset of the population who read (or collect and preserve in climate-controlled vaults...) comics and graphic novels, and too often accept style over novel-like content. Not so this one! Bechdel has produced an emotionally intense and unflinchingly honest memoir here, and the artwork perfectly complements rather than overwhelms the narrative.

I hate to see Bechdel ghettoized as a Lesbian artist/writer, because while the Dykes to Watch Out for strips were (obviously) gay-themed, they were scorchingly funny and the characters complex enough to appeal to a less-invested audience than just the gay community. While Fun Home does address Bechdel's father's closeted homo- or bisexuality, and her own coming out to her parents, the book really isn't exclusively a "gay" memoir. It's a memoir of a complex set of family relationships and memories of her own young life seen through her adult eyes. And in that regard, it has universal appeal.

At an author's reading, Bechdel went into some detail regarding her illustrations. She had access to a great many photos of the inside of the family home, and went to great pains to render detail accurately (although these are not static copies, but lively, expressive drawings).

Fun Home has at once both a tear-inducing emotional rawness and a comic, belly-laugh inducing, almost gleeful sense of the absurdity of everyday family life. Savor every frame--it took the author over seven years to produce, and given the state of the graphic novel (in the US) I fear it will be a while before we see another quite as good.

I had never read a graphic novel and I was unable to put this one down! The concise storytelling/"storydrawing" is incredible. Wow!

The humor is rather dry. However the depiction of a family with deep secrets, growing up to learn them, and navigating the way to adulthood is SPOT ON. I was prepared NOT to like this book as prior Bechdel materials are only so-so to me. This is some of her best work. While this book may elicit a fairly negative response in some readers, the pecadillos of any family are as unique as they are both unseen by outsiders and yet their existence is universal across all families (if truth be known). Recognition of that fact is unsettling. Bechdel handles a tricky subject with obvious care and sensitivity.

I began to read this book under the pressure of glowing reviews and constant buzz. I couldn't get away from the fact that people said it was just amazing. So, naturally, I gave it a try

Not to be anticlimactic or anything, but I stopped reading the book around page 100.

Maybe it's because I'm not a lesbian, maybe it's because I grew up in a fairly well-adjusted home with supportive parents, but absolutely nothing in this book spoke to me. I understand that this work must have been incredibly cathartic for Ms. Bechdel, and I'm glad that she got it off of her chest, but I don't really see what's in it for me.

The book prides itself in being able to rattle off literary reference after literary reference, but to me the book comes of as being supported solely by these allusions with nothing underneath to keep the reader interested. How many times do I need to hear about what Proust thinks of the situation she's in? What about her opinions? To me, the book comes of as elietist and smugly over-intellectual. I just feel like she's showing off, how she can tie images of her father up with the myth of the Minotaur, how she can draw all these paralells between his life and the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Allusions are a great thing and can add some beautiful depth to the story, but when each following page contains yet another "witty" allusion, it just gets tiresome.

Again, this is my opinion. I understand that this book means a lot to a lot of people, but I just wasn't feeling it

This is probably the best memoir I've ever read. The Liars' Club: A Memoir is an amazing book, but this one has more charms, a more clear-headed desire to cut through the upper layers and get to the meat of the thing. The book is a graphic novel, and that allows Bechdel to do all sorts of tricks with the memoir form that wouldn't otherwise be possible - constant reveals of information in interesting ways, more implication than explication, and recreation of scenes through images rather than the written word. This also makes it a quick read, if a very compelling one. I have a suspicion it's one I'll want to read over and over, too. Pick up a copy of your own.

This is a great book to read for the summer. Funny, tense, unforgiving and shocking....a gem.

Alison Bechdel is a very well read, literary author. Meaning, I have to look up some of her words in the dictionary. She also references great books in literature and events in political history. I have read and supremely enjoyed every book she has authored, so it was a sincere gift to read this eloquent and entertaining memoir of her life. She mananges to blend some deeply intimate and tragic events with her witty and spontaneous humor. All of her fans and anyone new to her craft will most certainly enjoy and be moved by this treasure of a book, no matter your sexual preference or if you have one at all! I highly recommend not having one, and I highly recommend this book, to all genders.