Fun Home

The cover for Fun Home

Literary criticism can often seem boring, irrelevant, or both. Half the time, the reader is left to wonder if the critic hasn’t simply made everything up, overanalyzing trivia and inventing theories that the author of a work never intended. This is not mere self-flagellation, but a key aspect of this month’s selection, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, an autobiographical graphic novel from 2006. The daughter of a funeral director and high school English teacher, Alison has to grapple with the above sentiments in the most existential terms possible.

Literary criticism isn’t merely part of Fun Home’s story, it is indicative of the endless struggles Alison has to understand her family and have them understand her, applying the same rigors of analysis to her own life as to literary classics. Alison comes out of the closet, deals with the revelation that her father was gay, and the aftermath of his apparent suicide. Bechdel narrates with a candor that is never intrusive. It is achronological, but never as aggressively as so much postmodern fiction, arranging her chapters more along thematic lines than the set timeline of events. With references to everything from James Joyce’s Ulysses to The Wind in the Willows, Bechdel also incorporates the very geography of her native town in a story that spirals outward and inward. It contains a depth and breadth far greater than its 232 pages would suggest. Like a great literary classic, Fun Home could inspire an analysis longer than the original work.

Fun Home was a finalist for a 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, the Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction, a Lambda Literary Award and an Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work in 2007. It was recently adapted as a Broadway musical and won five Tonys. It can be found at most major comics retailers.