I had imagined my confession as an emancipation from my parents, but instead I was pulled back into their orbit. 

Fun Home - a family tragicomic by Alison Bechdel was the virtual bookclub pick of the month. It’s a bestselling graphic memoir of Alison sharing her uneasy relationship with her late father. Great. I love graphics, I adore memoirs and being someone who also lost their estranged-of-sorts father early on in life, this should be an absolute banger. 

This started off strong when Alison was talking about growing up in the funeral home, the dysfunctional family and her coming of age story as a lesbian. It was also intriguing when her mother began telling her about her late father and that Alison and him had more in common than the surface level view of being two isolated islands within the home. 

I wish I could say I loved this more than I did but man I’ve never had to look up so many words for one book. I feel like I missed a lot of the references too because she goes over how her and her father seem to run parallel to classic lit characters, and I’ve never read a James Joyce book in my life and who the hell is Proust? Like was this a memoir, or a book review to an old man’s library where “why, yes in fact I have read every book here”. 

I think most people could publish a memoir, even with the most mundane life. If you have the gift of gab or an ability to connect with words, absolutely you’d have a best seller for at least a week. Bechdel’s writing felt unconnectable (not a word and it’s staying), it felt overly complicated and intentionally gaudy. I mean her parents were both academics so that does track here, but I definitely wasn’t able to draw the connection I was hoping for. 

Fun Home is apparently a broadway musical, and I wonder if it’s as verbose or if the medium of the storytelling brings it down a peg.