1000 Novels Challenge: My first review

Last month I read about a neat reading Challenge on the book review blog of a fellow Grinnellian, Jennie at Biblio File. I used to be an avid reader, but as early as midway through high school I began struggling to juggle school, extracurriculars, and my desired reading load. Until recently, my available energy and time to devote to pleasure reading has only decreased through the years. Since graduating from college in May, I have been picking up the pace once again. So when I saw the challenge I thought it might be a fun way to encourage myself to read instead of wasting so much time browsing the internet and watching trash on TV or Netflix. I also figured it would reinforce my renewed commitment to writing here.  

The challenge is to read 10 books from The Guardian’s list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read Before They Die, including 1 from each category (there are 7: war and travel, science fiction and fantasy, state of the nation, family and self, comedy, crime, and love) and 1 should be a book you’d never heard of until seeing it on this list (this will not be a problem for me).  After you read the books you are supposed to post a review online. I don’t really know how to write a book review, so this might be messy. I will try to figure this out as I go along, but mostly here I’m just winging it.

I haven’t figured out all of the books I will read yet. But even though I am reading three other books – way to go at goal-setting, Abby! – I have now read my first book for the challenge. I’d seen it on the list and recognized the author but not the book. And then when I was browsing the college bookstore the other day I saw it in the required reading pile for the GWS class I tried to do as a staff audit this semester. There was a huge pile of them and I just couldn’t help myself, I bought it that afternoon.

I read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home:A Family Tragicomic, out of the family and self category. Sometime in the last couple years I ran into a reference to the the Bechdel test/rule in the blogsphere. Also see the comic it originates from and an NPR story about it. The test is for movies and TV shows, and passing it requires that there be 1.) at least two women, 2.) who talk to each other, 3.) about something other than a man. The idea of the rule is lasting and interesting because it seems simple but it is difficult to find a lot of movies that pass, and present women as more than cliches. The idea was presented by Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, which has been running for 26 years. I think Bechdel is an important artist and thinker, so it made sense to me to read her book when I came across it on the list.

To the book! 

Bechdel’s book is a memoir that focuses on growing up with and interacting with her father, an extremely well-read high school English teacher and small town funeral home director/mortician. That’s where the title comes from; the family referred to the Bechdel funeral home as the fun home. The author’s at times strained or distant relationship with her demanding father is highlighted in this memoir comic book, which is actually the first comic book I’ve read, and the first comic book memoir I’ve encountered. Bechdel’s pictures and ironic or comical references are sharply juxtaposed with a serious, cold analysis of  a man who she knew both intimately and only vaguely. Only after Bechdel comes out to her parents as a lesbian in college does she find out that her father has for years been having affairs with young boys, and Bechdel describes her reception of the news, following so closely on the heels of her own revelation, as being “upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents’ tragedy”.

Bechdel chooses not to write the story in complete chronological order, folding back and forth in time as it suits the characteristics or behaviors she is describing, much as remembering a man and a childhood might naturally occur. She also makes somewhat neat literary references, drawing plenty of comparisons between her family and both authors and their characters. Both of these aspects beautifully intertwine to accentuate the lack of closure and the untidy nature of the relationship at the core of this story. 

This book is often dark, morbid, and unsettling. I think I read about the first three chapters then had to put it down for a half day or so because I was busy with work. When I came back to it I admit I struggled to be enthusiastic: though the writing and illustration are brilliant, this is not light reading. I found myself wanting to come up for air more often than not, desiring a story whose protagonist I could laugh with or a romantic comedy I could zone out to. When I did read on I was glad I did, dark as it is. As soon as I finished I felt the need to reread it, to understand it even better and cement it farther into my mind. I’m a couple chapters in again, going strong.

This book has so much to its 232 pages.  I suspect that people who had more of a classic literature background (Joyce, Wilde, Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, Camus, Greek mythology) would enjoy the analysis and descriptive abilities of Bechdel; though one of the great parts of this book is I didn’t have to know any of these works to follow her, and the ones I did know, it wasn’t overkill. The book is a fascinating if unhappy glimpse at a family and its many deceits, emotions, motivations, and secrets. If you are interested in LGBT history or memoir, I think this is an important work that also pays tribute to many more important works and comments on notable gay right moments. 

Because I read this book when I was feeling good, I came away sobered but stable. I don’t know how I would have handled it if I was in a bad place. It was a brilliant, honest, refreshing piece that was most disturbing not in mention of hardship or death, but rather in revealing just how unsatisfying life’s explanations can be, just how murky our perceptions and realities tend to turn out. Don’t expect a happy ending or a trite life lesson from Bechdel’s powerful insight into one man and his influence on her life. But you wouldn’t really want one anyway.

Read this book – it is a quick but thought-provoking and entertaining read that you won’t soon forget.

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