Book summary

Alison Bechdel, known for the wonderfully funny and politically astute comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, has created an intense, brilliantly crafted memoir about her deeply closeted father in graphic novel format. Bruce Bechdel, a funeral director and English teacher, obsessively restored their 19th-century home, stayed in the confines of the family's rural Pennsylvania town, and much to his daughter's shock, seduced teenage boys. Committing suicide just a few months after Alison came out to the family, she ruminates over the timing, unfolds feelings and thoughts in a series of memories, moving around fluidly in time, with the selective use of letters, diaries, and photographs. Comparing her father to Daedalus, Proust, and Fitzgerald, among others, Bechdel has created a literary-laced examination of familial connections that is piercingly honest. For each panel, she took a digital photograph of herself in position as a resource for the drawings, taking almost 1,000 pictures in all. A 2006 New York Times Notable Book and Time Magazine's #1 book of 2006.

Media reviews

"In this brilliant, bleakly hilarious memoir in comic-book form, [Alison] Bechdel combines stories from her emotionally barren but weirdly fascinating childhood with elegant allusions to Proust and Joyce to make a gripping story of filial sleuthery and, in the end, hard earned acceptance."