[books] ALISON BECHDEL - Fun Home

Kind of exhausting. Not, I think, because of the near-unbrokenly lofty tone (as Douglas pointed out in his Salon review, Bechdel chooses her arcane words very carefully, which I dig) or because the subject matter is heavy. And the book's certainly not too long; I wish it were longer.

It's because nearly every panel has captions in it. Bechdel gets very little opportunity to use her skill at dialogue-- she looms over the whole thing as narrator. And why not? It's her story! But the constant 'voiceover' meant that at the end, I had the lingering feeling that I'd just read 240 pages of prologue. The story never reaches 'now'; as strong a character as the author is through her narration, she never steps in. The closest she comes is a disorienting reference to public records that she looked up in 2001.

The clarity and depth with which she intertwines different points in her past throughout the rest of the book makes this overarching omission weird.

I also have mixed feelings about the ways Bechdel apologizes for winding the thread of her life so tightly. Maybe she didn't want to stake the book's success on her ability to make implicitly clear the difference between the coincidences she reports and the symbolic correspondences she draws; an author who blows that distinction can come off as just making shit up to support bogus sentiment. She never does. I feel like maybe she never even comes close enough to need an apology.

On the other hand... well, on the other hand, it's a beautiful book. I've reread the long-ish stories at the ends of the Dykes To Watch Out For collections so many times, it's not surprising I (a) have very particular unconscious expectations about pacing, and (b) have so much respect for Bechdel's talent that I'm perversely easy to disappoint. Normally it's a little alienating to see so many rave reviews of a book I have reservations about; in this case, I couldn't be happier.