One of the most eagerly anticipated graphic memoirs of recent years Fun Home" is a darkly funny family tale pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdels sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapis " Persepolis" its a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alisons father a historic preservation expert & obsessive restorer of the familys Victorian home a third-generation funeral home director a high-school English teacher an icily distant parent & a closeted homosexual who as it turns out is involved with his male students & the family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking & fiercely funny we are drawn into a daughters complex yearning for her father. & yet apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned fun home as Alison & her brothers call it the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence the denouement is swift graphic & redemptive."