Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Literature & Fiction, Comics & Graphic Novels
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Literature & Fiction, Comics & Graphic Novels
Book Type: Hardcover
This book was a disappointment for me. I was expecting something wonderful, based on the glowing reviews the book has been given, but I found it mediocre at best.
For starters, the story is incredibly depressing, with no real uplifting moments. We enter a picture of a very sad, lonely, abusive childhood, in which an absent-minded mother, and angry, violent, controlling father do their best not to interact with their three children, who develop neurotic tendencies to cope with the misery. The narrator evidently has only one friend in childhood, who is very briefly mentioned in two scenes, and I found myself wondering if the author's childhood was really as featureless and lacking in joyful childish respite as she makes it seem.
Her writing comes across as incredibly cold and overly-intellectual, with feelings rarely acknowledged or depicted, and the adult narrator's voice drowning out any hints of the child, who probably has an interesting story to tell. The book would probably have been better suited to standard word-based storytelling, as the author keeps a stranglehold on the device of narration, never letting the images tell the story.
The main character, the author as a child and young woman, never seems to develop any real relationships with other characters besides the oppressive figure of her father, which is another strange and disorientating feature of the book. Her father comes across as a miserable, abusive a-hole, with no redeeming qualities, so having to read a few hundred pages about him is trying.
Another thing that bothered me was the author's tendency to constantly apologise for her own opinions within the context of the story, never stating anything with certainty or confidence (this made the lasting effect of her childhood painfully clear). There are claims that this book contains humour, but I detected none whatsoever, buried as the story was beneath a mountain of tragedy and pain.
This may have been an important form of self-therapy for the author, but it is not an enjoyable or very enlightening read.
For starters, the story is incredibly depressing, with no real uplifting moments. We enter a picture of a very sad, lonely, abusive childhood, in which an absent-minded mother, and angry, violent, controlling father do their best not to interact with their three children, who develop neurotic tendencies to cope with the misery. The narrator evidently has only one friend in childhood, who is very briefly mentioned in two scenes, and I found myself wondering if the author's childhood was really as featureless and lacking in joyful childish respite as she makes it seem.
Her writing comes across as incredibly cold and overly-intellectual, with feelings rarely acknowledged or depicted, and the adult narrator's voice drowning out any hints of the child, who probably has an interesting story to tell. The book would probably have been better suited to standard word-based storytelling, as the author keeps a stranglehold on the device of narration, never letting the images tell the story.
The main character, the author as a child and young woman, never seems to develop any real relationships with other characters besides the oppressive figure of her father, which is another strange and disorientating feature of the book. Her father comes across as a miserable, abusive a-hole, with no redeeming qualities, so having to read a few hundred pages about him is trying.
Another thing that bothered me was the author's tendency to constantly apologise for her own opinions within the context of the story, never stating anything with certainty or confidence (this made the lasting effect of her childhood painfully clear). There are claims that this book contains humour, but I detected none whatsoever, buried as the story was beneath a mountain of tragedy and pain.
This may have been an important form of self-therapy for the author, but it is not an enjoyable or very enlightening read.
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