Notable
November 28th, 2006 | Uncategorized
Fun Home made the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of the Year! Thanks to all the people who alerted me to this fact before I knew it myself.
Fun Home made the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of the Year! Thanks to all the people who alerted me to this fact before I knew it myself.
23 Responses to “Notable”
Congratulations,Alison! So glad to see you get the recognition you deserve.
Wheeeee!
On the other hand, Fun Home wasn’t mentioned in the Nov 25 NYT story on graphic novels aimed at teen girls. Odd omission since it deals with that central teen question, “what is going on here?” But maybe, even though our heroine is a teen, the book is aimed at adults looking back. Whatever, just recognition for a classic.
Congrats Alison! Also this past weekend Fun Home was featured in Canada’s national newspaper: The Globe and Mail in their Year-end feature books section, the Globe 100: The books you need to read. Its in the Biography/Memoir section:
“A brilliant graphic memoir of a young girl’s coming of age in the faded grandeaur of a rural mansion. Fun Home is as much about Bechdel’s complex relationship with her eccentric, aesthetic, mortician father–a closeted homosexual and apparent suicide–as it is about her own adolescence and coming out. In black-and-white panels with green wash, wryly observed non-linear episodes explore the father-daughter dynamic. The book invites comparison to Persepolis, but it is more complex and nuanced, emotionally, narratively and artistically.” (Nathalie Atkinson)
I finished Fun Home late late last night, and will be revisiting parts/all of it again. Loved it.
Jen Carroll
Congratulations again. Glad the kudos keep coming for you.
Off topic but perhaps of interest:
Never liked Barbie? Well,now you can get your own Bobbie,3 styles of andro & butch dolls. http://www.dykedolls.com/site/index.htm
Yeah,I’m just a font of informaton today. I do have a life.Honest.
http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1164678911309440.xml?oregonian?ylccsd&coll=7
An article in the Oregonian about how Fun Home should win the Pulitzer Prize.
Hey………..how about that Oregonian! Keeping my fingers crossed for you Alison!
Congratulations. I enjoyed your reading at Outwrite in Atlanta.
“. . . it deals with that central teen question, ‘what is going on here?'”
Dead on.
I know! I was so excited when I read this, I thought I would pop! But then it made me realize- I boughtt copies for my ex, my daughters, another friend, and my brother-but I haven’t gotten one for my house yet-gotta get on that…
I ordered a copy of Fun Home from an independent bookstore in the neighbourhood, but it takes about 2-6 months to get it.
Should have ordered more than one copy. And the owner of the bookstore is having a baby within a month so that might delay it even more.
The OREGONIAN, cut-and-pasted from Steve DUIN’s column:
‘Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” deserves the Pulitzer Prize.
‘I don’t offer that opinion lightly. Bechdel’s graphic memoir about her father’s suicide, and his closeted homosexuality, is brilliant. Her account of their relationship is extraordinary, and it is illuminated, in devastating fashion, by the complex and ever-changing interplay of words and pictures.
‘Art Spiegelman won a well-deserved “special” Pulitzer in 1992 for “Maus,” a tale of the Holocaust animated by mice, cats and pigs. Bechdel’s work reveals how extensively the literary form has evolved in the last 25 years.
‘She employs journal entries, police reports, passport photos, dictionary entries, maps, and excerpts from her father’s favorite books — including James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past,” and Albert Camus’ “A Happy Death” — to bring not only the Pennsylvania landscape into focus, but the rocky topography of her family.
‘The result is a memoir of riveting honesty and unrivaled texture, and a reading experience you won’t soon forget.’
Yeah! What he said!
Alison, that’s fantastic!
congratulations!!
The NYT blurb in its entirety is “A lesbian comes to terms with the life and death of her closeted gay father in this graphic memoir.” Hm…. sounds different when it appears in straight media like that, innit? “A lesbian…”
The Pulitzer, the National Book Award, all the top 10 lists in the world…in my mind, this book should win all accolades, prizes, honors and laurels in the world.
I am so happy for you Alison. And happy for us, your lifelong readers. And I am So. Proud. Deep congrats and gratitude, my dear.
Your book is also named one of the best graphic novels in Publisher’s Weekly. Congrats on your continued success!
Many, many, many congratulations on the 500th episode, the recognition from the NYT (and the Oregonian!), and all the accolades and honors yet to come. But most importantly, thanks for all the tears, laughter, community, and pleasure you’ve brought to so many of us with all your work (figured you’d be more likely to see my thanks here than under the 500th episode!).
Mazel tov. Just plain mazel tov.
Fantastic! Keep my fingers crossed for you
Fun Home also featured in the selection of author picks for book of the year in the UK Guardian: it was Mark Haddon’s only choice:
Mark Haddon
“Alison Bechdel’s father was a closeted, gay funeral director. Fun Home (Cape) is the story of their complex and tangled relationship. It could have been shocking or self-pitying. In fact, it’s understated and warm and filled with hundreds of satisfying details that made me go straight back to the beginning as soon as I’d finished. It’s also a graphic novel. Except that it’s not a novel. Or very graphic, given the subject matter (someone is going to have to invent a decent name for this flourishing genre). This is literature. In pictures.”
And it more predictably also made it onto Sarah Waters’s list!
The whole feature at http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1956350,00.html
Hoo-rah for graphic novels! Especially gay graphic novels.
geniric xanax