2024 the best comedy narrative review

Price: $18.99 - $9.56
(as of Dec 02, 2024 14:05:11 UTC - Details)

From the New York Times bestselling author of Fun Home, Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama is a brilliantly told graphic memoir of Alison Bechdel becoming the artist her mother wanted to be.

A New York Times, USA Today, and Time Best Book of the Year

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother — to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0544002237
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 2, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780544002234
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0544002234
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.69 x 9 inches
Reviewer: M. T. D. C. M.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Brilliant narrative and graphic book.
Review: Are you my Mother? is the most intellectually engaging comic book I have ever read, and I have read plenty! I came to this book because her name is in my list of "must" female graphic artists, and I am not disappointed. There are many reasons, beyond the undeniable quality of the book at both narrative and graphic levels, I was thrilled to find some of my favourite reading interests being part of the narrative (psychology, psychoanalysis, mental disorders) and some of my life practices reflected as well (dreamwork and metaconciousness), while a friend of mine is very interested in the Mother Archetype (and I even had a synchronicity event with her while reading this book).Are you my Mother? is Bechdel's quest to understand the relationship she has with her mother from childhood to the present time to help her understand how their relationship shaped her psyche an who she is. It sounds a bit boring, but it is not!The book is a wide open window to Bechdel's mind and heart, and to the way she lives and sees the world. She does not censor herself to be liked, so her opinions about the world, life or other artists, her family, her mother, her girlfriend/s and herself are sincere and believable. We also see her displaying her neurosis, depression, her obsessions and compulsions. Bechdel has a sharp-razor mind that understands complexity with easiness and sometimes she thinks the reader will to. I don't think is always the case, but she does not debase herself to the level of the mainstream reader because that is not who she is. A killer combination of elements that will get any person interested. There is no fluff in this book, but you will find moments of tenderness, passion, fun, sadness, doubt, confusion and raw honesty, all of them infused in the hiper-metaconsciousness Bechdel swims daily to sort out her personal and creative life.The book has a Matryoshka doll sort of feeling as it is organically multi-layered and cohesive in her graphic and literary narrative, and one layer cover another, which, at its turn, covers another, despite all being a perfectly organic set. This a very Magritte-ish book as well, both in the imagery (See, f. e. pages 212 or 252) and its structure. So we see her writing the book about her father, while she is interacting with her mother, creating the book about her mother, thinking about the book about her mother, seeing herself doing so, at the same time. Almost an out of the body experience. The chapter on mirrors is perhaps the most clear example of this Magritte's man painting himself while paints himself while paints himself. Extremely cool.Graphically speaking, Bechdel is amazing. Her drawings are realistic, very expressive and multifaceted, very attentive to the detail (from the facial micro-expressions to the details on the floor or walls, everything!) but also very dynamic. Her approach to this graphic novel is also very photographic and cinematic, and reminds me of a pre-movie visual-rendering of a script, because her drawings are not only fabulous per se, they are fabulously composed and framed: eagle-view scenes, scenes from the street into a room, scenes with the self as object (shots of her feet, reflections on a mirror or train window), voyeuristic (sex scenes). Moreover, she inserts and reproduces with her own handwriting personal (past and present) letters by her, her mother and her father, pages of newspapers, highlights from the books she is reading, clipped photos and quotes, mock-flashback images about her mother's childhood, Winnicott and Wolf's lives, and what it is not. Just awesome. They create texture, they create life on a paper and visually engage and enthral the reader.Everything looks and flows so easily that one forgets that it is masterful. You have to stop and say wow to yourself, because this girl has an extraordinary talent. I found so many wow pages and vignettes! Just one example, pages 103-105 and how she depicts the pass of time, so beautifully simple and effective.Having said the above, this is a complex book, divided in chapters that start with the depiction of one of her dreams, and dive into especial facets of the relationship mother-daughter from a psychoanalytic point of view. She starts with Freud and Jung readings but ends devoting her attention to the work of Donald Winnicott, whose life and writings on mother-child bonding click more with her. She also sees some parallels between Winnicott's theories, Virginia Wolf's writings (the Lighthouse especially) and her own life. Bechdel plays dream analyst and psychoanalyst with herself, and she is the object and the subject of her book. There are nudity, sex scenes and adult themes in the book, so this is not a graphic book for a lazy reader or for children.I don't like the hue of red used in the normal pages of the book. I would have rather had all in black or white or work on another hues. I found that the textures of the colour could have been better, but this me being fussy!

Reviewer: Zelda
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Brilliant read
Review: Funny and brilliant! I easy to resonate with. The current connection to Winnicot's theory adds to enjoyment of the book.

Reviewer: ladiesbane
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellence wrecked.
Review: For cartoonistry -- the drawing itself, the physical pacing, the layout, and so on -- this is beyond five-star work. The author draws from posed bodies and photographs, for deadly accurate scenes, and draws facial reactions masterfully. The art alone is worth the purchase price. Wow.For writing, however: three stars. For all the complexity of the author's perceptions, self-awareness, and psychotherapeutic insight, there is not much of the writer's craft applied. There are moments when the thoughts, feelings, actions, and flow are all fully charged and moving forward, but they make you notice the barely-edited, possibly pointless episodes that much more. Sometimes I got the feeling that the author thought she couldn't omit something for flow, tighten up the narrative for readability, or take any liberties with the story. I understand that it's a memoir, but part of writing is drawing a clear picture. Given the story's tie-in with Freud and Woolf, I expected a deeply detailed picture that included a good amount of atmospheric chaff, but there were roads to nowhere that needed polishing and editing. And, more than anything else, the perspective of time. Her mother is still living, which caused problems. How do you finish a story that is still going on? I think if she had answered that question before diving too deeply into writing, perhaps even creating an outline, she would have done herself a favor with the book and possibly with her own understanding of herself, the subject. Too much analyzation; not enough actual thinking.The journey is one of looping episodes, frenzy and exhaustion, no leavening of humor, and a microscopic view of the author's internal life. I read this book in one sitting, and felt like a vampire afterward, just as embarrassed as if I had read her personal mail. This story-less book isn't poorly written so much as unfinished. Some parts are crafted with patience and an editorial mind, but others are blurted onto the page in a way that is neither fiction nor memoir -- if anything, it's like a dream diary, with the facts lying there jumbled, waiting for someone to sort them out. Normally, this is the author's job. Freud says there are no accidents, and this story might have been transparent to him. To me, it's not.That said, it was still a fascinating read, and the beautiful artwork kept me ploughing through when I wasn't so deeply involved in the Winnicott & Woolf aspects. Overall, I thought Bechdel could have used a writers' group to her benefit, but my only real disappointment was the ending (or lack thereof.) It felt rushed. I felt bad for the author -- a writer can just pop off a draft when he or she has finished the story, and doesn't need to storyboard it, block it, draw it, ink it, shade it....I would strongly recommend this book for any diehard fan of her old serial comic, DTWOF. Seeing the real-life elements behind episodes and elements of the strip was delicious. For other readers, try Fun Home first and work up to it.

Reviewer: Hannah
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I'm currently writing a term paper about this book. Would recommend

Reviewer: Akshay Kundu
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: One of the best books you are going to read

Reviewer: Delia
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Fascinante mezcla de literatura y psicoanálisis. Excelente novela gráfica. Tan buena como la primera parte, solo un poco más compleja.

Reviewer: Jan Smith
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I don't love it; I do not enjoy dysfunctional family sagas, and Bechdel's talent is such that this book is poignant and painful. But I'd bought it as a gift for a major Bechdel fan, and she is over the moon about it.

Reviewer: ParcForêt
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Alison, narratrice-personnage principal, auteur, explore sa relation, frustrante, intense, avec sa mère.Elle convoque de nombreuses lectures (Winnicott, V. Woolf sont cités à de nombreuses reprises), partage des extraits de ses séances de psychanalyse, livre des retranscriptions de ses conversations téléphoniques avec sa mère, raconte des bribes de ses relations amoureuses, propose des fragments des pièces de théâtre où sa mère a joué comme actrice, tout cela pour cerner cette relation qui la fuit.Est-elle aimée de sa mère? l'at-t-elle été? Sa mère at-t-elle de l'admiration, du respect pour sa fille? Autant de questions auxquelles Alison cherche fébrilement une réponse.Pour ceux qui auraient lu Fun Home, du même auteur, il ne faut pas s'attendre à quelque chose de similaire. Are you my mother se lit lentement et ne peut pas être classé parmi les divertissements.Mais c'est prenant et marquant dans son austérité.