Book review
I don’t know if Tolstoy was right about all happy families being alike, but the unhappy family in this irresistible, award-winning book are certainly unhappy in a most unusual way.
The titular fun home in Alison Bechdel’s memoir refers both to the family funeral parlor that her demanding father managed and to their own home, an equally depressing Gothic Revival pile renovated to within an inch of its velvet-curtained life. Until his probable suicide at age 44, Bechdel’s emotionally stunted father sacrificed his wife and three children to his obsessive, rage-filled This Old House restoration and perfectionism — a way to sublimate a more insidious urge. To quote Bechdel: “I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.”
What Bechdel later discovered was that her parents’ marriage was a sham: a closeted gay man and his longsuffering wife. Bechdel reveals more secrets that I won’t spoil. Bechdel’s artistry — the carefully constructed narrative as well as the revealing illustrations — will leave you thinking about this book long after you’ve dwelt on the last pages.
- Goodreads rating – 4.08
- SUMMARY – Ivonne Rovira