Are you my mother? A comic drama, by Alison Bechdel

Bechtel broke out into the mainstream with her graphic novel Fun home, in which she attempted to come to terms with her upbringing and with her father’s closeted gay life and suicide.  Herself lesbian, she was best known for her comic strip Dykes to watch out for before Fun home.   Are you my mother cleverly plays on the title of the well-known children’s book, in which a baby bird is hatched in the absence of his mother and goes from one animal to another asking that question until he finds his real mother.  In Bechdel’s second graphic memoir, she explores years of therapy and her own relationships, as well as, in a way, psychoanalyzing her mother, a gifted and frustrated woman  in a house full of secrets.  In the end, like the little bird, she seems to find the real mother.  The drawings are wonderful and this “sequel” to her earlier book very well-done.  Wonder if she’ll tackle her two brothers next…  390 pp.