The Beyond Busy Global Book Club discusses this book from June 4th - June 10th 2012, Join the discussion any time!
Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama is written by Alison Bechdel and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012.
This is another book by an author with a huge following. It’s the second one like that we have read so far. The first was last month’s Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott. (Our first selection, Cheryl Stayed’s Wild did not originally have a huge following but it sure does now: watch Oprah talk about Wild as the inspiration to restart her book club on the same page!)
I’ll have more to say about Cheryl Stayed, Wild and Oprah in a future post, but for now, let’s kick off the discussion of Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel.
Had you read any of Bechdel’s work prior to reading this book?
Did reading her work make you any more or less receptive to this book?
Do you think it would have helped you as a reader of Are You My Mother? to have already read Bechdel’s book, Fun Home?
What did you think about the book’s beginning? Were you pulled right in or not?
Did you like the interweaving of several stories in this book: Alison’s story, her mother’s story, her father’s story, Winnicott’s story, and Virginia Wolf’s story?
You can respond to any or all of these questions, as you like.
Let the games begin! (I’ll announce the June book in a separate post tomorrow.)
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I had never even heard of Alison Bechdel and don’t know if I would have picked up Are You My Mother had it not been “assigned.” I would have missed out on something really wonderful. I LOVE how the genre allowed the different story lines to criss-cross over and over again. It is so different from anything I’ve ever read before and I am so glad that I did.
As for the story, I was pulled in immediately and found it difficult to untangle myself. The relationship between a mother and a daughter is a universal one and it certainly spoke to me even though the particulars are different.
I am looking forward to learning what others thought about it.
The week the book came out in Canada, I managed to find a signed copy and devoured it in days. Was I waiting for it? Yes. I loved Fun Home, loved the precision of the sentences, her honesty, and I admired the deep work the author had done to write the memoir.
That same depth revealed itself in this book. And it’s obvious why it took her seven years! The metanarrative, the story about trying to write a story, was so well done. That said, it might not be for everyone. This is a book for memoirists and writers, so it’s fitting to see this discussion here.
I found Alison Bechdel’s book fascinating. I’d never read a graphic novel before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I like how she interwove the stories. It gave a nice theme to the book and brought the disparate memories together in a cohesive way. It was really interesting to read about her life.
I’d never read any of Alison’s books. I think if I had, it would have been an easier read.
The result was that I found myself reading it from the beginning a second time. It’s not a quick read for me. But I like the interweaving of stories, it adds depth.