Review: - Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

I don’t know if I mention it enough, but just in case I don’t, I really like graphic novels. Like, really like them. I have a lot of t shirts with really geeky graphic novel related things on them, and I refuse to be ashamed. I love the effort that goes into them and I love their general thick glossiness and how the stories themselves are generally totally kick ass. As part of the Graphic Novel Challenge last year I decided to branch out from my almost solely Neil Gaiman based graphic novel collection and try some different styles. Fun Home came on my radar when I was looking for books the internet thought were similar to Perspolis by Marjane Satrapi. Any of you who have been reading my blog over the last year will probably know that Persepolis was my ‘oh my god what is this book and why did nobody tell me about it before??!’ book of 2011. I LOVED it, and up until I read The Night Circus, it was the book I was recommending to everybody, so I had incredibly high expectations of Fun Home going in.

Alison Bechdel’s autobiography centres around the family business; a funeral (‘fun’) home, and her childhood and growing up, although really it focuses on her issues with her father, Bruce Bechdel, and coming to terms with being a lesbian. Alison’s father is painted as a remote man, unpredictable, angry, and distant from his children. The reasons for this – that he was a closet homosexual who was having affairs with male students, and Alison’s babysitter – don’t become clear until later on in the book, but they have a considerable effect on Alison herself both consciously and unconsciously. She feels as a child that he loves their big, historic house more than his children, and is more interested in renovating it than in spending time with her and her brothers.

Although I didn’t love it like I love Persepolis, I can see where the comparison came from.  Both are stories of growing up in unusual and difficult circumstances (just to be clear, I’m not comparing Bechdel and Satrapi’s situations – they are clearly not the same, but they are both stories of a young girl feeling very lost and uncertain of who she was and where she belonged), and their style of illustration is similar – both are done solely in black and white and are very clear and easy to follow. Personally, it’s a style I find more relaxing than the full, aggressive colour of many other graphic novels.

The story isn’t told chronologically but jumps around a lot which I found made it more engaging. Both of Alison’s parents are prodigiously intelligent people; her father is a professor, and her mother is an actress. When I originally wrote that sentence, it came out in the past tense, and although Alison’s mother is still acting during the course of Alison’s childhood and adolescence, she feels like one of those women whose individuality became subsumed by her husbands’ personality and her children’s needs. Her mother seems very disappointed with life, resigned to living with a man who doesn’t really want to be with her, and whose interests are totally separate from her own. Bechdel talks about her mother with a sort of sadness, and actually I just found out that she is bringing out a new book in May 2012 entitled Are You My Mother, seemingly to even things out a bit.

Throughout the book, Alison’s parents are not often seen together, and when they are they are violently arguing, but still it takes Alison’s mother until Alison is nearly twenty to ask her father for a divorce. Her parents seem to both have very creative and intellectual lives, and her mother is in many ways an incredibly positive role model for Alison – acting and completing a Masters thesis while raising three children, but despite all the achievement she is shown as disappointed, lifeless, and worn out. The facial expressions in Fun Home were one of the things which made it most effective for me. Bruce Bechdel’s face is always the same – closed up and emotionless even when he is talking to Alison about having to visit a psychiatrist because he is ‘bad, not good like you’ (p153). Because Bechdel obviously knew what her father had done while writing the novel, the underlying accusation is always there throughout the story , giving the reader a different perspective on events than Bechdel herself would have had at the time.

People say that to a degree, every family is dysfunctional. I personally don’t have an experience of this – my family is big and loud and we all have similar interests and are always talking and ringing each other to borrow books, movies, clothes. We go to the pub together, to the cinema, some of my siblings came to stay for New Year and we had an awesome party... So I am lucky, but I know a lot of people who are less lucky than me, and everybody has their secrets it’s just that some are bigger than others, and Bruce Bechdels’ secret was definitely one of the bigger ones.

Another thing that I liked about Fun Home though was the other thing that makes it so comparable to Persepolis. It is filled with books. Throughout Alison’s life, she reads. Her father reads - he recommends her books from time to time. When she begins to think that she is a lesbian, she reads about it – all the books she can get her hands on. I can completely relate to this, and I’m sure many other readers can. When I want to learn about something, I read about it. Although I really enjoy a good debate, I am the kind of person who likes to be sure that I have all my facts straight first, and so in many ways I would rather learn intellectually first, before putting ideas into practice. I learned to knit this past year from a book,  which I know is not really comparable to learning about your sexuality from books, but it can be so comforting to read about somebody who has been through the situation you have been through and been confused as you are confused and to see how they resolved their situation.

Fun Home won’t be going on the list of things I rave at people about, but it will be staying on my shelf so that I can recommend it to people.  

Reviews: - Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall & Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham

The Fables series of graphic novels by Bill Willingham is one of my newest and most awesome discoveries in the graphic genre. I originally found out about it at Sophisticated Dorkiness, and after doing a bit of research I thought it sounded exactly like my kind of thing. This is really a double review of two Fables books: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, which is a kind of prequel, based around the Scheherezade/ Arabian Nights concept, and the first official book in the series, Legends in Exile.

The Fables (Snow White, the big bad wolf, Beauty and the Beast and the rest) have been forced to leave their magical homelands by an enemy known only as The Adversary, and have taken refuge in a suburb of New York which they have named Fabletown. Here they’ve lived among humans for centuries, and here is where Legends in Exile begins. Although it is the first book, I am glad that I read 1001 Nights of Snowfall first, as it explains a lot of the set-up of Legends in Exile, such as how Snow White and Rose Red came to be estranged, how Old King Cole became the mayor of Fabletown, and the beginnings of  Bigby the wolf. Fables runs the risk of being ridiculous – anything based around fairytales always has the potential for childishness – but it completely isn’t. Legends in Exile, more than 1001 Nights of Snowfall, is a very adult, raw and complex and I loved it. The fairytale characters are presented with all the uncomfortable edges of humanity – all their flaws are jarringly present and obvious.

Legends in Exile is pretty much a murder mystery. Rose Red’s apartment is found trashed and covered in blood and Bigby, the head of the Fabletown police force, is called in to investigate. Red’s sister, Snow White is the assistant to the mayor of Fabletown, and she becomes involved in the hunt for her estranged sister’s killer. The plot follows the development of the investigation, and the revelation of Rose Red’s entangled love life, starting with her boyfriend Jack (as in Jack the giant killer, of ‘and the beanstalk’ fame), and quickly warping to involve a complex relationship with Bluebeard, the guy who kills all his wives...

I thought that the way the story developed was very enjoyable. Although it wasn’t the most shocking ending ever, the story was still pacy enough to keep me engrossed and wanting to read the next one (which I now have). I always love new takes on fairytales – many of you will know that this is the subject I’m apt to geek out the most about – and I love that Willingham has stripped fairytales back to what they would be like if they were actually about real people in the real world. What I’ve read of the Fables series so far has a ring of authenticity that fairytales generally lack, and I think that’s probably what I found the most powerful about them. I also really liked the artwork, especially on 1001 Nights of Snowfall. It is often quite stark and fairly brazen (as are the stories), while retaining some of the traditional fairytale, ethereal feel.

The rest of the series has gone on my wishlist...

Review: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

Cohen the Barbarian. He's been a legend in his own lifetime.
He can remember the good old days of high adventure, when being a Hero meant one didn't have to worry about aching backs and lawyers and civilization. But these days, he can't always remember just where he put his teeth...So now, with his ancient (yet still trusty) sword and new walking stick in hand, Cohen gathers a group of his old -- very old -- friends to embark on one final quest. He's going to climb the highest mountain of Discworld and meet the gods.It's time the Last Hero in the world returns what the first hero stole. Trouble is, that'll mean the end of the world, if no one stops him in time.

Synopsis from Goodreads

Until recently, I though I'd read all of Terry Pratchett's books. Then I discovered there are actually a few that I don't remember, so may possibly not have read. This, being all graphicy and illustrated (beautifully, I may add), I though I'd read it for the Graphic Novel Challenge, although I'm not sure it counts, as the story isn't actually told through the pictures, but they definately enhance it! Also, it was big enough to not fit in my bag, so I'm counting it!

Basically, this is a story about heroes and Gods and the end of the world. But the thing I love about Terry Pratchett is that he takes such huge events as death, religion, and even the Post Office, and just makes them really really funny.

If it hadn't been for its' huge format, meaning I couldn't physically take it out of the house, I would probably have finished this within a couple of days. I loved the fact that it was a book that you could read and completely absorb and understand, without really having to pay attention to it at all. Pratchett's storytelling style is also very similar to my dads, which I love. When we were kids, my dad used to tell us 'made up stories', that went on for days at a time, and eventually went on to have sequel after sequel, and become series, and they were always very 'and then this happened, and then something else happened', but the something else would always be very bizarre, and they were always hilariously funny. It always felt a bit accidental, and Pratchett's writing is the same, so it kind of felt like he took over when I felt I was 'too old' to listen to bedtime stories anymore.

What else can I say? The man's a genius.

Rating: *****

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley

 So, a while ago, I watched a little film called Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and fell in love.. resultingly, I just had to read the books that the film originated from, and thus my discovery was complete.

'Lost at Sea' is the standalone book which precedes the Scott Pilgrim novels in release date. If they weren't graphic, I guess you would call O'Malley's stories magic realism, for their casual acceptance of impossible things - Ramona's ability to get from A to B via the use of magical doors only she can find, Raleigh's belief that a cat has stolen her soul... However, Lost at Sea is much more abstract than the Scott Pilgrim series. It also felt to me, much less complete in itself. Having said that, this didn't make it a bad novel, in fact I (somewhat predictably) loved it.

O'Malley continues to surprise me with how real his characters are, and how much he can build them up, and make you empathise with them. Initially, I thought that this was because the Scott Pilgrim series, being 6 books long, allowed him the space to do that, and admittedly, there is a lot more back story involved, but Lost at Sea was a standalone novel, and it still had completely 3D characters. Really a story was only given to Raleigh, but that was ok, because the story is really only about her. And I totally loved her by the end.
As an aside, I'd just like to mention that this novel took me about an hour to read. The illustrative technique is absolutely brilliant - just really stark and simple, in black and white with thick lines, it makes it impossible to step away from the book for even a minute.
The illustration is a reflection of the story of the novel: about a girl called Raleigh who believes that she has no soul, on a road trip from 'visiting her dad' in California, back home to Canada, with three kids from school she doesn't know too well. The storyline and characters are all very simple, and O'Malley has the genius of being able to make his readers unquestioningly accept the viability of whatever he chooses to put in a story.
Raleigh starts off the book coming across like a bit of an outsider, and slightly out of this world, and throughout the course of the tale, she become included, accepted, and even finds a best friend for the first time in years. Really, Lost at Sea is a coming of age story - showing first love, friendship, and self discovery, and the graphic format just gives it that extra tinge of awesome.
The only thing that annoyed me is that you never find out what's in the letter! (Read the book, you'll know what I'm talking about!!)
I read this for the Graphic Novel Challenge (and because my amazing fiance bought it randomly..), and I'm really glad I did! So far, I'm totally loving the books I've been reading for this challenge!

Rating :*****