Alison Bechdel – författare

Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and the rest of the cast of cult-fav characters. Most of them are lesbians, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis. Bechdel’s brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends—academics, social workers, bookstore clerks—fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents. Bechdel fuses high and low culture—from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory—in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”

The Best Graphic Book of 2021 by Publishers Weekly | A New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021 | A New York Times Notable Book | An Autostraddle Best Queer Book of the Year | A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year | A St. Louis Post Dispatch Best Book of the Year | NPR, 12 Books NPR Staffers Loved | Shelf Awareness Best Books of 2021 

From the author of Fun Home, a profoundly affecting graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times

Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.

A heartrendingly comic chronicle for our times.

The Best Graphic Book of 2021 by Publishers Weekly | A New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021 | A New York Times Notable Book | An Autostraddle Best Queer Book of the Year | A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year | A St. Louis Post Dispatch Best Book of the Year | NPR, 12 Books NPR Staffers Loved | Shelf Awareness Best Books of 2021 

From the author of Fun Home, a profoundly affecting graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise, set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times

Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s ("Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!") to the existential oddness of present-day spin class. Readers will see their athletic or semi-active pasts flash before their eyes through an ever-evolving panoply of running shoes, bicycles, skis, and sundry other gear. But the more Bechdel tries to improve herself, the more her self appears to be the thing in her way. She turns for enlightenment to Eastern philosophers and literary figures, including Beat writer Jack Kerouac, whose search for self-transcendence in the great outdoors appears in moving conversation with the author’s own. This gifted artist and not-getting-any-younger exerciser comes to a soulful conclusion. The secret to superhuman strength lies not in six-pack abs, but in something much less clearly defined: facing her own non-transcendent but all-important interdependence with others.

A heartrendingly comic chronicle for our times.

When her father dies unexpectedly graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile brilliant one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. Moving between past and present Alison relives her unique childhood playing at the family's Bechdel Funeral Home her growing understanding of her own sexuality and the looming unanswerable questions about her father's hidden desires. Fun Home is a refreshingly honest wholly original musical about seeing your parents through grown-up eyes.