Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Rating: ★★

I tried and tried my hardest to finish this book but unfortunately I was definitely not a fan of this graphic novel. This is my 2nd attempt of reading Fun Home and still I am unable to reach half way into the book and I do not understand the huge raves about this graphic novel. I have a few reasons why I did not enjoy this graphic novel which I will go into details later but the only reason why I lasted this long is because it was turned into a musical and won all the big awards and I believe I should redeem it and give it a second chance.

This graphic novel is about Alison Bechdel recounting memories of her childhood, her lesbianism, and her father who died in an accident or committed suicide whichever way you look at it. The foundation of her family life was full of lies and illusions. Her father was an English teacher but when he wasn't teaching, he became a interior decorator changing his house from looking like trash into a victorian age of design. Her family was clearly dysfunctional and it survived by keeping secrets which is her father is a homosexual and had intimate sex with his high school students. 

This graphic novel is lucky that it doesn't get one star because I actually made it to 100 pages before I called it quits and I believe this book is not meant for me but could impact other people especially young individuals who are confused about their sexuality and a story of coming of age. If I am going to be truthful I will gladly now go into details why I did not like this graphic novel.

Attempt #1: I constantly saw that this graphic novels was being recommended to me from Goodreads and countless other sites and I did not read the book description and entered it with a blank canvas. All I knew was that the father was gay and I was excited to read and see gay sex and other gay contents but soon I found out that in fact it was nothing what I expected. I immediately realized that it was about a Lesbian and her father was gay and that was the extent of showcasing his homosexuality. So I immediately quit without giving it a review or rating.

Attempt #2: It won Best Musical, has a great cast and broke records that has never been seen before in decades on Broadway. Immediately I needed to know what is the whole hype of this book and I definitely read it wrong the first time so I gave it another chance. I forgot completely what the story is about and by a hundred pages I was so over this book. I am a gay man and I respect all sexuality whether it be gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, any thing sexual I am fine with it. The problem is when it comes to movies, books, shows, and other forms of art I dislike anything that deals with Lesbianism.

I respect women and their body but I am not fascinated to see two women making out and having sex in a graphic novel let alone picture it in real life. I realize that I love reading books in which I can relate and understand the character and I really dislike the characters in this book and everything about them is depressing from their personalities to the poor choices they made in life and sacrifice their own personal happiness in order to conform to society standards of living. 

Probably I read this book wrong and I apologize but I doubt I will ever read this graphic novel again. The illustrations are nice and the storytelling is fine but this book is definitely not for me and I really wished that I loved this book. I found this to be boring and I felt meh the entire time which makes it harder to actually finish the book. I am grateful that I borrowed this from the library because I never want to see this book again in this lifetime. Thank you