Michael Moon begins his book review of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, Fun Home by rightly saying that “It’s hard to imagine a more ‘bookish’ graphic narrative than Allison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Fun Home is a richly layered narrative with numerous allusions to the stalwarts of Western literary canon be it Joyce or Proust or Hemingway and so many others. Within these seething references to literary and artistic influences, lies Alison’s own story of growing up, coming to terms with her family’s eccentricity and most particularly her father’s own life trajectory too.
What is it about?
As the title suggests, the graphic novel is styled like a memoir where Bechdel traces her growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, in a house that her father painstakingly restores to its former Victorian stature which is also when Bechdel as a child begins to hate the kind of ornamentation her father glorifies through this restoration. This itself seems a tad bit ironic given the kind of lush intertextuality that suffuses the graphic novel itself. Of course, references are not ornamentation of the same kind as her father’s obsession with ornamental and exquisite objects. Yet aren’t allusions themselves a sort of artifice, employed to offer a deliberately intended effect which is somewhat similar to the effect that her father’s restoration of the house created?
But to come out of that digression, in the graphic novel, Bechdel gives a glimpse also of her father’s profession as a high school English teacher and a funeral home director in their town, weaves in her parents’ fraught relationship and the impact of her own college days on her understanding of her identity and sexuality.
One last reason to pick it up?
You honestly don’t need convincing from an obscure book review blog to go read Fun Home. I came a bit late to the party and this book has been on my to-read list for ages (as have several other books, to be honest) but I could never manage to read this one because graphic novels are generally quite expensive! But oh what a treat it has been to read this book finally (thanks to my university’s library!). I would recommend it simply because of its bookish nature in itself, especially if you are familiar with those allusions. But even if you are not, the way Bechdel ties in those references to her everyday life is breathtaking. The constant threading in and out of those allusions and her life story is a treat and making those connections or uncovering the wordplay (even if you don’t know the references) as you read the story is a real delight. Though a warning for some that the heavy Western emphasis in those allusions could be a downer. For example, for me, the repetitive Freudian references seemed overbearing simply because I want to go beyond and break myself free from thinking about family relationships through those paradigms alone. But other than that, the intertextuality is fertile, rich or to borrow from Valerie Rohy, “humectant”.
Another reason to pick it up is the non-linearity of the narrative. The novel isn’t a coming-of-age that is simply a linear narration of Bechdel being born, growing up, experiencing things and that’s it. The novel starts media res, using her father as the focal point at the beginning and moves in and out of the past and the present while constantly also being interrupted by anecdotes of Bechdel herself or her family members or being interrupted by page spreads portraying materials from Bechdel’s life such as photographs or diary entries.
Lastly, despite Bechdel’s emphasis on depicting objects/things from her life, the narrative often challenges the reality of these things too. You would expect that because the diaries, photographs and notes on the margins of books exist, they actually happened. Yet, Bechdel plays with the possibility of this not being the case at all, especially in the way she tries to reconstruct her father’s double life. While this narrative strategy can be unnerving because generally we read so that we can know about things, it does activate a sense of chaotic thinking and emphasises on the significance of unknowability. Unknowability in the sense that you can only touch upon the edges, promises of what might have happened (as is the case with some of the objects Bechdel unearths about her father), instead of really knowing the big picture and maybe that is also enough: that it is enough to know that you don’t know or that you may never really know.
Hope that’s not too confusing and hope that convinces you to go read the book! 🙂 It’s okay even if it doesn’t because like I said, an obscure book review blog may not be able to convince you completely!