Sarah and Michal recently attended the San Francisco version of the Tony-award winning Broadway musical Fun Home and they enjoyed it quite a bit. So when one of our friends offered to loan us the graphic novel that forms the basis for the musical I was very interested. The story documents the author's childhood in rural Pennsylvania; her realization of being, and coming out as, a lesbian; her father's closeted homosexuality, dalliances with his male students and his eventual, apparent suicide; and the strangeness attendant with growing up in a Funeral Home (i.e. "Fun Home").

The art is great (the author took photos of herself as each character in each pose to use as reference for drawing) and the text is dense and cerebral (as an English teacher, Bechdel's father instilled a love of literature into her so the story is full of allusion). The book itself has won extensive critical praise and better yet has inspired a few campaigns to get it banned from schools and public libraries (always a good sign).

Although I did not spend a lot of time trying to understand every literary reference I still thoroughly enjoyed it.