The panels are 12 to a page, choppy and brief, emphasising the claustrophobia of awkward, stilted communication in a moving vehicle. My favourite pages recall a conversation between Bechdel and her father in the car on the way to the cinema. The Odyssey and James Joyce's Ulysses both have a strong presence, and there is a sense that these works have played an important part in informing Bechdel's understanding of life. Oscar Wilde gets a shout-out, with The Importance of Being Ernest taking centre stage in a chapter remembering Bechdel's mother's acting endeavours. Despite their particularity, Bechdel's struggles have a resonance for anyone dealing with family life, which makes Fun Home both comforting and startling in its honesty.īechdel's use of literature adds a depth to the text that plays beautifully with its light-hearted observational elements. Both are visual interpretations of treasured memories I share with my own Pa. The story of Daedalus and Icarus runs throughout, connecting the opening frame of Icarian games with the closing image of the author as a child jumping into the arms of her father. Their relationship is close but 'not close enough', as Bechdel writes, and their interactions are often painfully poignant and carefully linked. Her father dominates the novel as Bechdel traces the intertwined threads of her life: their father-daughter relationship, her homosexuality, her father's closeted homosexuality and his death. The title's 'fun home' refers to the family funeral parlour where her father worked and is an appropriate setting for Bechdel's investigation of loss and grief.

She lays out her faltering relationship with her father, the breakdown of her parents' marriage and her own explorations of sexuality on the page in glorious illustrations. Taking the reader back through her remembered childhood, Bechdel offers us not simply a furtive peek through the keyhole, but a fully-fledged cut-away of her life.

Fun house graphic novel