Fun Home

A panel from Fun home.
Bruce (left) and Alison Bechdel.

Fun Home (subtitled A Family Tragicomic) is the name of a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania focussing on the relationship with her father, Bruce Bechdel. According to the New York Times Fun Home "is a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions" (review by Sean Wilsey, published: June 18, 2006).

The family grew up in Beech Creek, where Bruce Bechdel was funeral director and English teacher. A central motif of Fun Home is the Victorian mansion, restored by Bruce Bechdel, in which the family lived. An important event is the death of Bruce Bechdel at the age of 44, which may or may not have been suicide. A central theme is homosexuality, both the author's and her father's. Bruce Bechdel was a closeted gay man, his daughter Alison came out as a Lesbian shortly before her father's death. The writing relies on allusions to literary works by Joyce (Ulysses), Proust (In search of lost time) and Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), among many others.

The drawing consists of black line art with a gray-green ink wash. The book is 232 pages long, and was published by Houghton Mifflin (Boston, New York) in June 2006.