Will I love Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama?

This book taught me what “nonfiction” is.

Bechdel uses her narrator as a vehicle for thinking (in this case, for thinking through a narrator’s complex relationship with her mother), using a constellation of sources from Donald Winnicott to Virginia Woolf to The Sound of Music. She perfects the illusion/truth central to this genre: that we’re witnessing the writer’s process of discovery in real time.

When I’m inside the book, I feel as though I’m inside Bechdel’s brain. I know this feeling is a testament to her craft, but I still couldn’t help thinking, when I finished the book, that… show more.

Fun Home is Alison Bechdel’s most famous work (and it is phenomenal), but this one captured my heart. While the former focuses on her father, here Bechdel turns her focus on her relationship with her mother, weaving in a lot of psychoanalysis and modernist literature.

Bechdel’s characteristic intricacy and attention to detail are on full display, and the frequent inclusion of dreams and their interpretation (a particular interest of mine) make the whole book feel almost surreal yet completely grounded.

Alison Bechdel (best known for Fun Home, a graphic memoir about her bisexual teacher-cum-funeral-parlor-owner father) also wrote this graphic memoir about her actor-writer-teacher mother. It largely takes place in the 1990s, when being boldly “out” was just becoming possible—and Bechdel joyfully and graphically reveals herself as such to her readers. With her mother, however… maybe not so much. When told that Alison is publishing a book of lesbian cartoons, the mother asks: “Isn’t that rather a narrow scope?” before landing the zinger: “You’re not going to use your own name, are you?” Still, the book’s power derives from… show more.

This book is perfect when paired with the P.D. Eastman version by the same title. In human life, we aren’t so different from the baby bird of the Dr. Seuss empire who believes a cow, a steamboat, or even a “Snort” might be his mother. The graphic component of this book in which Bechdel marries the whimsy of storybook illustrations with complex renderings of psychoanalytic theories explores the ways in which we are estranged from our mothers, despite their seeming omnipotence. It’s a visual and intellectual pleasure to read.

I adore graphic novels, and a graphic memoir is even better. I love when the medium of a cartoon encompasses such depth and nuance. Are You My Mother is funny, visually stunning, and addictive to read. I loved the honest, flawed, human portrayals of the mother and daughter in this book—as well as the other characters. I was riveted from the first page to last and read this book in one delicious sitting.