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Fun Home

A Family Tragicomic
Bechdel, Alison (Paperback - 2007)
Average Rating: 4 stars out of 5.
Fun Home


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This book takes its place alongside the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr. It's a father-daughter tale perfectly suited to the graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian

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This book takes its place alongside the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr. It's a father-daughter tale perfectly suited to the graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian house, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned 'fun home, ' as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.--From publisher description.

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Author: Bechdel, Alison
Title: Fun home
a family tragicomic
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Imprint: Boston : - Houghton Mifflin
Pages: 232
Edition: 1st Mariner Books ed
ISBN: 9780618871711, 0618871713, 9780618477944, 0618477942
Language: English
Awards & Distinctions: American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards, 2007
Notes: "A Mariner book."
Old father, old artificer -- A happy death -- That old catastrophe -- In the shadow of young girls in flower -- The canary-colored caravan of death -- The ideal husband -- The antihero's journey.
Statement of responsibility: Alison Bechdel
Characteristics: 232 p. :,chiefly ill. ;,23 cm.
Author (Original Script): Bechdel, Alison
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Dec 09, 2012
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  • hiking1957 rated this: 2 stars out of 5.

This book was okay. I agree with the reviewer that said that it just seemed like she kept telling the same story over and over again just added a few more details every time. The art didn't seem to follow in some of the areas. All in all probably not one that I will be recommending to me friends.

Dec 06, 2012
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  • HEATHER MCGIVNEY rated this: 3 stars out of 5.

I think that I am one of those who just don't "get" graphic novels/memoirs. I would rather read a more detailed narrative and imagine the scenarios for myself. I know that pictures can convey emotions and nuances that are hard to write, but I don't know that I necessarily pick up on those nuances. At least they are quick to read. That said, I did mostly enjoy this book. At times it seemed over-wrought, and other times it seemed to be simply observing the situation. I wish that there had been more of a continuous narrative thread through the book, instead of chapters that felt more like self-contained vignettes.

Sep 18, 2012
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  • mythoughts rated this: 4 stars out of 5.

Loved this - so different.

Jun 17, 2012
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  • emkeller rated this: 5 stars out of 5.

Beautiful, thoughtful, tragic. Bechdel evokes the joy and pain of a distant father.

May 12, 2012
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  • hansendesigns rated this: 5 stars out of 5.

Read it, you won't be sorry.

Feb 06, 2012
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  • SkycycleX2 rated this: 5 stars out of 5.

A masterful melding of words and art, this is an excellent graphic novel that tells a compelling, personal story. Bechtel evokes time, place and feeling so well and tells the story of her and her father's struggle poignantly, yet unsentimentally. I really savored this book and couldn't put it down until the end. After I finished it I kept going back to re-read sections. It's one of those books you want to give your attention to and really sink into.

Nov 14, 2011
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  • cbreads2009 rated this: 1.5 stars out of 5.

thur book club graphic novel

I find myself wanting to read for the plot and to examine for the drawings. I love Alison Bechdel.

Sep 17, 2011
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  • marishkajuko rated this: 4.5 stars out of 5.

The rare graphic novel that is extremely well written.

Aug 01, 2011
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  • shapjul rated this: 4.5 stars out of 5.

This was perhaps the first graphic work I read that made me realize how much pictures could add to text. It's a wonderful memoir. The images really convey a great deal and enrich the work. (FWIW, I went from here to Posy Simmonds work (Gemma Bovary and Tamara Drewe)--also very good examples of the graphic form as something to be taken seriously.)

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Oct 11, 2012
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  • EuSei rated this: 0.5 stars out of 5.

EuSei thinks this title is suitable for 18 years and over

Sep 17, 2011
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  • marishkajuko rated this: 4.5 stars out of 5.

marishkajuko thinks this title is suitable for 16 years and over

Sep 02, 2009
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  • Anarchy_Bunny rated this: 4 stars out of 5.

Anarchy_Bunny thinks this title is suitable for between the ages of 16 and 99

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Nov 29, 2010
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  • pchakerian rated this: 5 stars out of 5.

Sexual Content: Some nudity and sexual acts.

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Jul 03, 2012
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  • emkeller rated this: 5 stars out of 5.

"If there was ever a bigger pansy than my father, it was Marcel Proust."

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