Additional information
by Alison Bechdel (Author)
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year - National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Winner of the Stonewall Book Award - Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award
Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking, bestselling literary graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, a unique coming-of-age story written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
How does a daughter resolve the legacy of mystery left by the man she called her father?
- Family Secrets: Growing up in the family funeral home, nicknamed the "Fun Home," was only the first layer of mystery in a household built on secrets.
- LGBTQ+ Coming of Age: As Alison comes out as a lesbian in college, she makes a discovery about her father that forces her to re-examine her entire childhood.
- A Complicated Father-Daughter Story: A raw and honest exploration of a fraught relationship with a distant, exacting, and enigmatic father.
- Literary Nonfiction: A narrative woven with rich literary allusions and heartbreaking honesty that redefines what a graphic memoir can be.
Author Biography
Alison Bechdel's cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical, and Are You My Mother? Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, among many other honors. Her new memoir, The Secret to Superman Strength, is forthcoming in 2021.
