Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home made the number-one spot on the Entertainment Weekly and Time magazine lists of the top 10 books of 2006. It also made it onto the best-of-the-year lists in USA Today, People, Salon, The Advocate and The New York Times. Here’s what Time had to say:
The unlikeliest literary success of 2006 is a stunning memoir about a girl growing up in a small town with her cryptic, perfectionist dad and slowly realizing that a) she is gay and b) he is too. Oh, and it’s a comic book: Bechdel’s breathtakingly smart commentary duets with eloquent line drawings. Forget genre and sexual orientation: this is a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other.I might allow “unlikely,” but isn’t calling this the “unlikeliest literary success of 2006” just a wee bit hyperbolic?
On the other hand, “stunning,” “breathtakingly smart” and “masterpiece” are most definitely in order. I do fault them for neglecting to include “brilliant” in their string of superlatives, though.
The book has actually been banned at a public library in Missouri. It’s far from pornographic (as some aghast citizens have deemed it), but — duh — just because it has purdy pictures doesn’t mean it’s for kids.
