I knew all about Fun Home, the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, when Harcourt joined Houghton in 2008 and her editor Deanne Urmy became my colleague. But I’d never actually read it. With the excuse of it now being homework, I dived in; when I emerged I started recommending it to every author and have never stopped. Here is a book that opens with the death of our narrator’s closeted father, who would walk in front of a truck only four months after Bechdel herself came out to her parents; the way she weaves their astonishingly parallel and interlinked stories into a multi-dimensional universe with complete control over the conversation between what’s said and what’s shown, while the events unfold with the inevitability and power of a Greek tragedy (if tragedies had a killer sense of humor), rewards endless study for writers who might not realize a graphic novel has so much to teach.
—Andrea Schulz, vice president, editor in chief, Viking
Photo credit: Michael Lionstar