Book: Are You My Mother?
Thanks to everyone who responded two weeks ago when I asked about posting a review of a book that didn't work for me -- hence, this is a review and not a recommendation.
The book is Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, the sequel to her graphic autobiography Fun Home.
Fun Home was focused on Bechdel's father, a part-time funeral home proprietor, high school English teacher, ardent interior decorator, and closeted gay man. It was moving and bittersweet, tracing Bechdel's relationship with a difficult father and her first steps into the lesbian community in college and after.
Are You My Mother? is the sequel. Obviously from the title, it's about Bechdel's mother, and it continues her autobiography up to the present, with a whole lot of attention on her struggles to write Are You My Mother? …very meta. A huge difference though: Bechdel's father died about 25 years before Fun Home was written, but her mother Helen is still alive.
I had some serious issues with this book, which I'll get into, but to start with I felt it really lacked the clarity of Fun Home. It reminded me of Karen Armstrong's autobiography The Spiral Staircase, the earlier parts of which I thought were well-written and insightful, and the later parts self-indulgent and self-pitying. It seemed to me that Armstrong just didn't have enough perspective on the more recent chapters of her life and would have done better to wait 20 years before trying to write about them. I had the same feeling here.
So, there were two things about this book that seriously bothered me. The first is that Bechdel's attitude toward her mother seems to be that despite all her failings and limitations, she did at least, almost inadvertantly, encourage little Alison's imagination, thus freeing her to become a writer. Out of many things wrong, she did one thing right.
It made me sad for Helen. Obviously she wasn't perfect, no one is. But it seemed to me that she coped admirably with a difficult marriage and a husband who was abrasive and very unhappy underneath. Bechdel portrays her as being cold and withdrawn, but recounts quite a lot of incidents where her mother seemed, to me, accessible, fairly engaged with her children and attuned to their feelings.
Even more, I was distressed and disturbed by the extent to which Bechdel described her interactions with her therapist -- two therapists, at different points in her life. I have a lot of experience with therapy and, I admit, I've got strong feelings about the privacy of those interactions. Sharing even a little of that, even with a trusted friend is something I'm really cautious about. Sharing it with everyone in the world horrifies me. By revealing so much of her therapeutic relationship, she has irrevocably changed -- and in my opinion, damaged -- that very relationship.
Which, granted, is her choice. Having read the book, and now, thought about what I read, I wish I hadn't been party to it. If it hadn't been an author I've admired and enjoyed so much in the past, I probably would have stopped reading before the halfway point.
The book is Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, the sequel to her graphic autobiography Fun Home.
Fun Home was focused on Bechdel's father, a part-time funeral home proprietor, high school English teacher, ardent interior decorator, and closeted gay man. It was moving and bittersweet, tracing Bechdel's relationship with a difficult father and her first steps into the lesbian community in college and after.
Are You My Mother? is the sequel. Obviously from the title, it's about Bechdel's mother, and it continues her autobiography up to the present, with a whole lot of attention on her struggles to write Are You My Mother? …very meta. A huge difference though: Bechdel's father died about 25 years before Fun Home was written, but her mother Helen is still alive.
I had some serious issues with this book, which I'll get into, but to start with I felt it really lacked the clarity of Fun Home. It reminded me of Karen Armstrong's autobiography The Spiral Staircase, the earlier parts of which I thought were well-written and insightful, and the later parts self-indulgent and self-pitying. It seemed to me that Armstrong just didn't have enough perspective on the more recent chapters of her life and would have done better to wait 20 years before trying to write about them. I had the same feeling here.
So, there were two things about this book that seriously bothered me. The first is that Bechdel's attitude toward her mother seems to be that despite all her failings and limitations, she did at least, almost inadvertantly, encourage little Alison's imagination, thus freeing her to become a writer. Out of many things wrong, she did one thing right.
It made me sad for Helen. Obviously she wasn't perfect, no one is. But it seemed to me that she coped admirably with a difficult marriage and a husband who was abrasive and very unhappy underneath. Bechdel portrays her as being cold and withdrawn, but recounts quite a lot of incidents where her mother seemed, to me, accessible, fairly engaged with her children and attuned to their feelings.
Even more, I was distressed and disturbed by the extent to which Bechdel described her interactions with her therapist -- two therapists, at different points in her life. I have a lot of experience with therapy and, I admit, I've got strong feelings about the privacy of those interactions. Sharing even a little of that, even with a trusted friend is something I'm really cautious about. Sharing it with everyone in the world horrifies me. By revealing so much of her therapeutic relationship, she has irrevocably changed -- and in my opinion, damaged -- that very relationship.
Which, granted, is her choice. Having read the book, and now, thought about what I read, I wish I hadn't been party to it. If it hadn't been an author I've admired and enjoyed so much in the past, I probably would have stopped reading before the halfway point.