Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

59 reviews

jmarob's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Death of parent, Mental illness, Sexual content, Infidelity, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, and Grief

Minor: Mental illness, Suicide, Car accident, Panic attacks/disorders, and Toxic relationship

rhubarbpi3's review

funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.5

I quite liked this! I thought it would be way more sad like the play (which I haven't seen but have listened to and heard a ton about) but I didn't find this very sad at all? She talks a lot about her longing for a relationship with her father, but not that she's sad she didn't have a good one... very interesting and I loved all the literary references/extended metaphors all the way through, this is the first graphic novel I've ever read to have done that. The word choice was interesting? I didn't dislike it, but there were more words I had to google than any other book I've read this year, which was interesting to pair with the perceived reading level of a story in pictures and words. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Grief, Infidelity, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, Car accident, and Child abuse

pandorasirens's review

dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Grief

Moderate: Mental illness, Suicide, Infidelity, Homophobia, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, and Pedophilia

blackberryjambaby's review

emotional informative mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic relationship, Homophobia, Infidelity, Outing, Suicide, Car accident, Pedophilia, and Racial slurs

Moderate: Blood, Child abuse, Grief, Medical content, Alcohol, Emotional abuse, and Gore

gussurireads's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny medium-paced

5.0

I was drawn to this because Bechdel is famous for, well, the Bechdel test, and as a queer woman who loves stories centered on women and their relationships with other women, that test is very important to me.

So I went in completely blind. Mind you, I am fan of graphic novels. I don't read a lot of memoirs, though. But Alison Bechdel writes and draws a compelling, honest and yes, at times pretentious, story of her bizarre family, drawing parallels between herself, an out and proud lesbian, to her closeted, deeply repressed father.

It's not the kind of graphic novel that you breeze through in a couple of hours. It took me a few days of carefully going through this and still there's so many references that eluded me, what with me not being an English major or a very cultured reader (I enjoy my fantasy, ok?)

Still, so much of Allison's story resonated with me, as most queer stories do. The act of discovering a new part of ourselves, coming to terms with it, rejoicing in this newfound identity, is quite possible the most universal queer experience of them all, and Bechdel is a master at embellishing her own experience. Like father, like daughter, indeed. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide, Sexual content, Grief, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, and Car accident

Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Homophobia

smoldragon22's review

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Grief, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, and Death

haileyhardcover's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

I don’t know how to rate this book, so I simply will not. Did I enjoy reading it? No, not particularly. It is awkward, painful, and unnecessarily sesquipedalian. Is it also incredible? Undoubtedly, yes. 

The amount of TIME that must’ve gone into writing - or more specifically DRAWING - all of this is mind blowing. With a cursory glance, one might look at Bechdel’s artistic style and think it unoriginal - similar to so many other comics we’ve seen before. But I beg you to look longer. Look at the detail; not in EVERY panel, but so many of them. Look at all of the WORDS. There are so many words - beyond the captions and the speech/thought ballons, so often the art of the panels themselves are just words - snippets from letters, journals, books, newspapers, court records, or the dictionary… and it’s all hand drawn?! I can’t begin to imagine how much time this would take… 

Fun Home is not fun. I cannot say I enjoyed reading it, but I also absolutely cannot deny that it’s a masterpiece. I have no idea how they could’ve turned this into a musical… 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Body horror, Death, Death of parent, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Medical content, Child death, Gore, Grief, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Car accident, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, Medical trauma, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Sexual assault and Pedophilia

avidales's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Grief, Homophobia, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Car accident, Cursing, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, and Physical abuse

alexisgarcia's review

dark reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

i think some topics weren’t explored enough, but the story was important and the art style was really nice

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Grief, Alcohol, Infidelity, Death, Outing, Suicide, Death of parent, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, and Mental illness

pobi's review

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

3.75

It was very good, and relatively thought provoking but I didn't really love it. Then again, memoir are not often my favourite, and neither are sad books. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death of parent, Homophobia, Car accident, Death, and Suicide

Minor: Child abuse and Adult/minor relationship