So today, I am going to put down another little book review on the blog. It’s Fun Home by
American cartoonist Alison Bechdel which had come out in 2006. It’s a pity that I didn’t know about it before.
Well, Fun Home is not everybody’s cup of tea. That said, it was right up my alley. It’s brutally honest and sometimes as bleak as real life can be and that’s what makes it so special. Alison Bechdel has not shied away from giving us a raw insight into her childhood home and her troubled relationship with her father. She also gives us a glimpse of how she came to terms with her sexuality and decided to come out to her parents.
This book deals with certain themes that might be uncomfortable for certain conservative people and I understand why there were attempts by some groups to get it banned in public libraries. But well that’s how real life is – filled with uncomfortable truths.
Bechdel took seven years to work on this graphic memoir and the hard-work really shows. At some point you might even feel like a voyeur, peeking into somebody’s house, because that’s how real some of the pages are.
Fun Home deserves to be in the book shelf of every graphic novel enthusiast in the world.
P.S On a side-note – do check out ‘Death & Darker Realms’ if you get the time, it’s a poetry collection about death, depression & dysfunctional relationships.