Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic―A New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century!

Why it's worth it

Alison Bechdel's memoir about her closeted father, her own coming out, and his death is one of only two graphic novels on TIME's 100 Best English-Language Novels list. It's a standalone story, so there's nothing else to buy afterward.

If you love literary fiction, this is the graphic novel written for you. Bechdel reads her own childhood through Fitzgerald, Joyce and Proust, and the allusions aren't showing off — they're how she makes sense of a father she couldn't reach. Readers who admire Joan Didion or Mary Karr for their cold-eyed self-examination will recognize the voice immediately. It rewards a second read the way a good novel does.

The story is complete in one volume, which lowers the stakes of trying the format. You're not signing up for ten books. Fun Home starts, circles, and lands, all in roughly 240 pages you can hold in one hand. If visual storytelling turns out not to be your thing, you've spent an evening finding out — and if it is, you've got a whole medium waiting.

From our review of 6 graphic novels for adults, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +If you love literary fiction, this is the graphic novel written for you
• +The story is complete in one volume, which lowers the stakes of trying the format
• +Bechdel's restraint is what makes the emotional moments land
• +The Broadway adaptation is proof the story travels

What to know

• –The non-linear structure can be disorienting at the start
• –The themes are heavy and specific: repression, a closeted parent, an ambiguous death