Sorry for the short reviews lately, I'm a bit backlogged in my "review every book you read" challenge.

Fun Home is a graphic novel that deals with the author's relationship with her father. I love that graphic novels are being used in this fashion (i.e., Maus, Blankets, etc.).

Alison had a strained relationship with her father, when she was a child. He was very meticulous and stressful, sometimes abusive. Her mother seemed emotionally absent. It was not until Alison grew into a young lady who preferred masculine aspects of herself, that she was able to bond with her father - who also had an appreciation for masculine beauty. When Alison left for college, she discovered that she was a lesbian. She immediately wrote home to tell her parents. Her mother was disappointed. Her father's response was to explain that he too had experimented in college. Her mother further explained that the experimentation on her fathers behalf did not end in his youth. Alison is not only dealing with the facts of her budding sexuality, but the lies and deception regarding her father's sexuality.

Then he dies.

He dies before she is able to make peace with him. Alison believes that the death was a suicide but the method of death was very ambiguous.

Fun Home is Alison Bechdel's cathartic way of dealing with the death of her father. It's interesting, funny at times and painful in others.