Monday, October 16, 2006

Bookshelf

Having finished The Overachievers and bailed on Irvine Welch's The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs halfway through (I hated all of the characters and I was tired of trying to decipher Welch's prose), I've started Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. I never considered myself the graphic novel type, but Josh got me hooked with Marjane Strapi's Persepolis books about growing up in Iran during the revolution0.. I also enjoyed Art Spiegelman's Maus, so I guess my growing appreciation for graphic novels is less of graphic novels than of graphic memoirs. Anyway, Fun Home is the rollicking recollection of a young lesbian raised alongside two younger brothers by a not-so-well closeted father and a tense, tight-lipped mother. The father, who committed suicide when Alison was 20, spends his days teaching high school English and his nights running the family funeral parlor. His spare time is dedicated to restoring to its ornate former glory the Addams Family-style gothic mansion which the family of five calls home.