Fun Home is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennysylvania, USA, focussing on her complex relationship with her closetted father and how she dealt with her own sexual orientation.
The memoir explores homosexuality in a painfully true manner. In particular the memoir carefully explores how the attitude towards homosexuality has changed and how our attitude can affect the lives of otherwise ordinary people and their families in ways that might be unexpected. Themes such as gender roles and dysfunctional families is also explored.
The story is told in an non-linear fashion; Bechdel often revisits and expands upon previously mentioned scenes throughout the book. The writing is pretty good but it can be a bit confusing at times, expecially if you haven't read many litterary classics since Bechdel often uses classics such as Ulysses to explain certain ideas. However it should be mentioned that she does this because her father loved reading and because he had read many of the books that she referred to.
The artwork matches the tone of the story and is quite interesting to look at. The characters are generally depicted in a simple cartoonish method which is fine except that in this situation we don't really get to see much emotion from any of the characters which makes it hard for the readers to connect with them. Yet at times the artwork can also be very detailed such as the scene with the dead body and the way Bechdel even mimicks her style of writing she used as a child.
This was definately an interesting book but I didn't like it as much as other graphic memoirs such as Maus; I'm not sure why. However I would definately recommend it to anyone who likes graphic novels, expecially graphic memoirs, and also to anyone who likes glbt books.