Fun Home – Amazing Read

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s illustrated tragicomic memoir Fun Home received a starred review in PW and has appeared on many Best of lists.  The title refers to the funeral home her family ran (she compares them to the Addams Family) and explores her relationships with her family, particularly her English teacher/funeral director/closeted gay man/historic restorationist father, with dark humor.  If you like the cartoons of Lynda Barry, memoirists like Augusten Burroughs or the essays of David Sedaris, you may also enjoy this book.

One of the most amazing and unusual aspects of this memoir, though, is the sheer scope of literary references.  (I love when a book comes with its own reading list.)  Both of her parents were English teachers, her mother was an amateur actress, and Alison herself turns to books when exploring her own sexuality. 

Here are just SOME of the books referenced in Fun Home:  Stones of Venice – Ruskin, Just So Stories - Kipling, Happy Death – Camus, Myth of Sisyphus – Camus, Sappho Was a Right-On Woman – Abbott, Sun Also Rises – Hemingway, The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald, Far Side of Paradise – Mizener, Washington Square – James, Taming of the Shrew – Shakespear, Word is Out – Adair, Well of Loneliness – Hall, Delta of Venus – Nin, Dream of a Common Language – Rich, World of Pooh – Milne, James and the Giant Peach – Dahl, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Zelda – Milford, Remembrance of Things Past – Proust, The Nude – Clark, The Worm Ouroboros – Eddison, American Dream – Albee, Mornings at Seven - Osborn, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care – Spock, The Trumpet of the Swan – White, Johnny Tremain – Forbes, The Wind in the Willows – Grahame, The Importance of being Earnest – Wilde, Waterfall – Drabble, And the Band Played On – Shilts, The Fellowship of the Ring – Tolkien, The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – Joyce, Earthly Paradise – Colette, and, finally, Ulysses by James Joyce. 

WHEW!  And it’s not even a very long book.  (Carol J.)