My Views of Fun Home

After reading Fun Home, I realized that I did not enjoy the book. This surprised me, since it had many traits that I liked. For example, the dry humor, observant yet somewhat detached tone, and interesting characters were all things I liked. The subject matter was also fascinating to me, since I had not read anything of this topic before. 

I decided to investigate my dislike of Fun Home by comparing the book to The Catcher in The Rye. While it may not be the most apt comparison, The Catcher in The Rye is the book most similar to Fun Home which I've enjoyed. 

The biggest difference between these two books is probably the story they tell. Fun Home is an analysis of the past, and thus spends a lot of time retelling important details from a relatively normal life. On the other hand, Catcher in The Rye is a glimpse into a dysfunctional person as they reach a pivotal point in their life. What this leads to is a big difference in tempo between the two stories, where Holden is constantly doing something stupid or facing a challenge, while Alison's story is much slower as she analyzes the flags of her past. It is definitely easier to read a fast paced string of events rather than a meticulous analysis, but I do not believe this is why I dislike the book. After all, there have definitely been slower-paced books that I've read in the past which I enjoyed.

I think my main gripe with Fun Home lies in the underdevelopment of the rest of the family. Alison and her father are the main points of this story, which is fine. However, I am annoyed that her brothers and even her mother are set aside. The story is a cause and effect relationship almost solely between Alison and her father, with only her mother and her father's lovers occasionally included. It would have compelled me much more to see how her father's actions might have affected her siblings, since she described her childhood as such an unusual and barren experience. Describing the difficulties her brothers went through and the inner turmoils they felt would have added a layer of nuance to the story, though it is fair to state that the point of the story is to explore Alison and her father's relationship, and elaborating on the rest of the family would be an unnecessary tangent. However, I still would have enjoyed to see the reactions of the rest of her family to both her and her father. 

It would not be fair of me to say that I disliked Fun Home without stating that my enjoyment of this book was likely influenced by how much I could relate to its main character. While Holden is very similar to me, Alison might as well be from another planet in terms of what I can relate to. Seeing Holden's struggles reminded me of my own, but Alison's struggles could only fascinate me in their novelty. Thus, I felt no real affinity to Alison and did not care deeply for her, but there have been other books with vastly different situations where I was heavily invested in the characters. For example, The Perks of Being a Wallflower had a main character who is almost the opposite of me, yet I almost cried at the end. I speculate this may be due to how The Perks of Being a Wallflower spent time reflecting on the consequences of its events, such as who was hurt and how this pain changed them. Every character was developed thoroughly, and I knew enough about these characters to care about what happened to them. On the other hand, Fun Home was much less developed for me. Still, it is arguable that the point of Fun Home was not for the reader to become so invested in these characters and sympathize with them such as in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but instead simply to tell the story of a daughter and her father.