Fun home : a family tragicomic / Alison Bechdel.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780618871711 (pbk.)
- ISBN: 0618871713 (pbk.)
- Physical Description: 232 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.
- Edition: 1st Mariner Books ed.
- Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin 2007.
Content descriptions
General Note: | "A Mariner book." |
Awards Note: | American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards, 2007 |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Bechdel, Alison, 1960- > Comic books, strips, etc. Cartoonists > United States > Comic books, strips, etc. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Town of Plymouth. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Pease Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Holds
0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pease Public Library | GRA BIO BECHDEL
Gift?: No |
34598000631955 | Graphic Novels - Reading Room | Available | - |
Library Journal Review
Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Bechdel, author of the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, has produced a brilliant memoir of her childhood with her closeted gay father. She describes the triumphs and many tragedies of growing up with a grace and intimacy that draws the reader in immediately. Her use of her childhood diaries, writings, and illustrations make this almost an archival work of her family's story and reveals the emotional torment Bechdel endured. (LJ 7/06) (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
BookList Review
Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
This is a father and daughter story. Bechdel's mother and two brothers are in it, of course, but Bruce Bechdel had the biggest impact on his eldest child and so is naturally the other main character in her autobiographical graphic novel. Emotionally and physically reserved, to the point of brusqueness, he busied himself restoring--and then some--the Victorian-era house he bought for the family in the Pennsylvania town in which he was born and lived virtually all his 44 years. He enlisted the kids for never-ending interior and exterior modifications of the place in what obviously was his major creative outlet. For a living, he taught twelfth-grade English and ran the small undertaking business that occupied part of his parents' house and that the kids called the fun home. Bechdel doesn't even hint about how ironic she and her brothers meant to be, because she is a narrative artist, not a moralist or comedian, in this book and because she has a greater, real-life irony to consider. After disclosing her lesbianism in a letter home from college, her mother replied that her father was homosexual, too. Alison suddenly understood his legal trouble over buying a beer for a teenage boy, all the teen male "helpers" he had around the house, and his solo outings during family vacations to New York. Bechdel's long-running Dykes to Watch Out For0 is arguably the best comic strip going, and Fun Home 0 is one of the very best graphic novels ever. --Ray Olson Copyright 2006 Booklist
Publishers Weekly Review
Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
This autobiography by the author of the long-running strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, deals with her childhood with a closeted gay father, who was an English teacher and proprietor of the local funeral parlor (the former allowed him access to teen boys). Fun Home refers both to the funeral parlor, where he put makeup on the corpses and arranged the flowers, and the family's meticulously restored gothic revival house, filled with gilt and lace, where he liked to imagine himself a 19th-century aristocrat. The art has greater depth and sophistication that Dykes; Bechdel's talent for intimacy and banter gains gravitas when used to describe a family in which a man's secrets make his wife a tired husk and overshadow his daughter's burgeoning womanhood and homosexuality. His court trial over his dealings with a young boy pushes aside the importance of her early teen years. Her coming out is pushed aside by his death, probably a suicide. The recursively told story, which revisits the sites of tragic desperation again and again, hits notes that resemble Jeanette Winterson at her best. Bechdel presents her childhood as a "still life with children" that her father created, and meditates on how prolonged untruth can become its own reality. She's made a story that's quiet, dignified and not easy to put down. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved