Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

Hard "story" to follow! Friends say it's not the format but the storyline itself, with all it's various angles. I'm on the fence... but not liking either, honestly. I felt like it was a distracted, disjunctive experience.

I LOVED fun house. I thought it was well written. Funny. Interesting. I couldn't relate to it at all, but it is one of my favorites graphic novels. However, after only one chapter of Are You My Mother, I have put it down. Probably one of the only graphic novels I might not finish. I am sure it is well written, and highly intellectualized, but it gets bogged down in refences and citations. I found myself speed reading anything with a font. It is very heady I'm sure, and I know her father would have been proud of its thoroughness, but self-examination is usually only interesting to the examiner. I don't want to delve this far into Alison's mind. It's not interesting. It reads like a college thesis. None of her mother's wit. Too much of Alison's rumination. But I will always give her stuff a try. Go back to the family dysfunction. We can all relate to that!

Bechdel does it again. Incredible, insightful, comic. This book was challenging and totally riveting. She is a wonder. I would recommend this wholeheartedly to anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, families, love.

I was delighted with Bechdel's previous book, which was generous with the comedy and drama. This new book was so whiney and repetitive I finally gave up and skimmed the 2nd half, which seemed to be just more of the same. Sorry to be so negative - I guess illustrated books don't fit the bill for me unless they are extraordinary.

A little disappointing after her first book was so good. I didn't really feel like this was about her mother or her relationship with her mother but just about the author. All the therapy sessions got old. Just my opinion.

Impeccable drawing, but too many head shots of the protagonist thinking about herself. Also way too much exposition on psychology and its connection to the mother-daughter relationship. Her publisher and professional backers did a disservice to Bechdel's reputation by letting her publish this.

I loved Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic so much-- so many things spoke to me, and I have been excitedly waiting for Bechdel's new book to come out. I just read the entire book in one sitting I was so enchanted, and I'm already looking forward to rereading it.

I love Alison Bechdel and I really enjoyed "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" about her father whom she believed was gay. Those were different times, and her description of her dad very much reminded me of an older married friend of mine who just couldn't deal with being gay. Helped me understand him a little better, and have more empathy. I was a huge fan of "Dykes to Watch Out For", used to read it back in the day when there were print periodicals targeted at GL (no BT, not back then) audiences. In general I enjoy memoir, but "Are You My Mother" is one hellacious self-absorbed meandering through every self help book and academic treatise the author ever read on whatever psychological theory interested her at the time. There is little narrative, and almost no detail about her life experiences, just a continuous monologue about every thought she ever had since she was, like, six. In fact, the author's relationship with her mother seems to be only a backdrop for her prolonged gaze inward at the minutiae of her Self.

I was so excited that Bechdel had written another book, and am crushed it's this boring. And I made it through Dickens Great Expectations when I was 12, just to say I did. This experience was far more painful than that one. I have friends who love this book, and for the life of me I do not know why.

In a nutshell, this is the most disappointingly BORING book I have ever waded through in my entire life.

Did I mention this book bored me?

I just could not appreciate this book, although I had admired Bechdel's Fun Home. The drawings continue to be great and expressive and there are both funny and insightful parts to this book. I persevered in reading the book out of interest and respect, but can't say I felt rewarded. I really did not learn much about Bechdel's mother. Maybe that was the point; and her mother is still alive, so I can imagine treading carefully. Instead of portraying her mother's interaction in more than a few instance, Bechdel indulges in a lot of introspection and I found the, what I felt as excessive, psychoanalysis off putting.

I looked forward to reading this book, I love Alison Bechdel's comic strip and I thought Fun Home was a fine work. But I couldn't get into this book at all; I kept waiting (and reading) for some revelation that would make the time spent worthwhile, but all I ended up feeling was that I bought this book and helped keep Alison from having to get a real job. (Not necessarily a bad thing if she spends more time on DTWOF.) It's written like a psychiatric case study with a lot of information that went over my head. In the end, Alison seems to reach some sort of peace with herself and her mother, but it was soulless to me.

Well, Bechdel's mother says it--in these pages--after previewing several chapters--of this book-- pre-publication: "It's a metabook." It's a book about--among many things--the creation of this book about her mother, and her mother is commenting on the creation of this book about her. How meta is that?

A dream sequence opens each section, and is usually revisited with greater insight later in the chapter. Psychology and psychoanalysis play a massive role here, with Alison's sessions with two different counselors giving us an intimate and ongoing look into her personal struggles. Parallel to this is her self-imposed (and almost obsessive) study of the work of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. His books, his papers, his biography--all give her another lens to view her conflicted and evolving Self through.

Another Bechdel feature is how she refers to and draws on other literature and writers: Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, and a fabulous aha moment with Dr. Seuss.

And mom. A gifted actor, a stunted writer of poetry, a woman married for many years to a closeted gay man, and a mother who learned from her own mother that "boys are more important than girls." There are some heartbreaking moments here (I won't share and spoil it). At times mom seems to purposely seek to diminish her daughter by referencing other authors, other memoirists, or other cartoonists, understandably triggering envy. And sometimes she seems to do this unconsciously. Not sure which feels worse when you are on the receiving end. On the other hand, there is absolutely a bond here. The two speak often by phone, visit, do a trip to the city together. So in their own ways, they do keep trying.

The book itself slips back and forth through time, and it's confusing at first to feel rooted in the narrative. Younger Alison looks very much like older Alison; a couple girlfriends look similar, even the two therapists resemble each other. Sometimes the action focuses on Fun Home, her earlier book about her father, and sometimes it's centered on this book-in-the-making. It keeps folding in on itself again and again, then opening back up, only to be refolded another way, like origami. Next thing you know, you have a beautiful and intricate crane. It all comes together in a spectacular way, so stay with it.

I've got to comment on the artwork. As I mentioned, each section opens with a dream. They end with a tight close-up in a thick black frame. The details in the cartoons--the personal artifacts on her desk, the tree outside the therapist's window, the book and movie titles--are worth slowing down for. And I love the addition of color here! All red and variations of that color. Bloody reds, clotted reds, muddy pinks, muted mauves, all very effective. When Alison talks to her mom on a land line, it's red like a Cold War presidential hotline linked to Russia.

It can't have been easy to write a book about someone you love who is still living. Her mother's sense of privacy is embedded in many of these pages, and this is a relationship that they are both continuing to co-create, off the page. This isn't a revenge memoir by any stretch. It's very thoughtful, very careful, and very brave. I'm sure it treads a space that makes both mother and daughter a little squeamish, at times. Ultimately, it's a loving exploration that ends on a sweet and generous note. I loved it. I even loved the dedication.

I enjoyed Bechdel’s first graphic memoir Fun Home, both in paper and theatrical versions. The bookend volume Are You My Mother? was, in my mind, an extremely different book and harder to like. (Heck: harder to finish.) While Fun Home was a sometimes painful, sometimes comic revisiting of Bechdel’s life, Are You My Mother? is an illustrated visit to a psychiatrist’s couch. (Literally.)

The material is dense, disjointed, and layered, working through various psychiatric theories (and their human underpinnings), Bechdel’s attempts to come to grips with her own psychological issues relating to family and relationships, and most especially her relationship with her mother, particularly revolving around Bechdel’s artistic career and the impact her first memoir had on that relationship. The layout is massively non-linear, cycling around through various periods of her life (and her mother’s life) in a way that presumes the reader already knows the basic outlines. (This is probably a reasonable assumption.)

This was not a book that I could sit down and read in a single session, or even in several long gulps. I kept reading a couple pages and then putting it down and having a hard time getting back to it. I think it took me over two years to finish it. I’m not saying the book isn’t good. I think it’s an artistic masterpiece. But it isn’t very enjoyable, or perhaps more accurately, it isn’t very entertaining. The expectations set up by the graphic format are at war with the deeply contemplative nature of the content. I would not have read an introspective memoir of this type as a textual book--just not my kind of thing. So I came to it with the wrong frame of mind to truly appreciate it. And so...I dunno. I honestly don’t know what to say about this book. An artist has to go where her muse takes her. Bechdel’s “Dykes to Watch Out For” strips weren’t exactly “fluff”, there was a lot of hard-hitting cultural commentary there, as well as historical chronicling. I would be personally unhappy if the graphic memoirs signal a permanent change in the direction of her work. But I don’t know that it’s possible to go back to that sort of light-hearted anecdotal strip after working at this level. I guess we’ll see.

This is a complex and at times exhausting book in which Bechdel analyzes her relationship with her mother. Many of the other reviews are so amazingly written and thoughtful that I will try not to repeat what has been said.

If you are interested in analysis/psychotherapy, women writers/poets/artists, and the process by which creative artists find their voice, I think you will enjoy this book. If you are not interested in these subjects, you may not. As a former academic I was challenged by the complexity of some of the concepts Bechdel presents. At times, I felt she needed to stop analyzing everything and just start living. However, as someone in therapy who tends to intellectualize things at the expense of the emotions, I also related to her dilemma. In fact, I gained some insights into my own family situation from it.

This book at times feels like following someone in a tight spiral down a well, but it is always brutally honest and rewarding. Like others, I could not pull my self away from reading this and stopped only for short breaks when my brain got overloaded with terms like "cathexis".

However, as a mother (about Bechdel's age) I looked at the book from a mother's perspective as well and certainly saw how her mother could feel the way she did.

Like many others, I wanted to reach into the book and give hugs--both to Bechdel's mother, who gave up many of her educational and career goals to live out the 50s dream of wife-and-motherhood only to find her life was a total charade, and to Bechdel, who tried so hard to be perfect in a very mixed-up family.

I hope that their relationship continues to grow and both of them find peace.

The book starts out oddly similar to how Art Spiegelman began Maus II: with an inability to start. It's less effective with Bechdal, because instead of revealing something she seems to express how uncomfortable she is with her subject matter. This is the prelude to an insecure, awkward book with various intellectuals, philosophers, and therapists providing cover for what she can't talk about. The disintegration of a 13 year relationship? Barely mentioned. Her mother's poetry? Not included. Mention of the origins of her mother's own emotional withdrawal? Barely mentioned. Evidence of Bechdel interacting with others beyond her own neurosis? None. Direct confrontation regarding ongoing issues? Nope.

But make no mistake: this book isn't about her mother. It's about a quest for a mother. It's about a writer and artist in crisis who is not ready to write about what she feels forced to write about. It's about an artist who produced a very special book and feels pressured to produce something similar and is struggling. It's this glaring vulnerability that makes it intriguing. It's the personal fortress of intellectual all-stars that makes it fascinating. You really are in someone's head, right down to all the obstacles, errors, rambling, and disjointed ideas. It's the story of someone's messy desk. It's a straw jar. For these reasons, it's different, it's challenging, and in many ways refreshing. What's absent in all her therapy wrangling and interior wrestling is some semblance of resolution -- much like endless therapy, it just talks issues into the ground, with no point where the lessons are taken away, and applied to life, that new and ever-changing force informed by childhood experiences, but not dictated by them.

In order to free herself from the burdens of memoir, I'd love to see the next book take the fiction route, where Bechdel will have the freedom to be as amazing and awful and angry and accusatory as she wants, to fictional foils who might resemble reality, but can't claim a place in it.

Alison Bechdel has never shied away from revealing herself. Her mother, on the other hand, has. While Bechdel has revealed the deeply troubled past of her family (being brought up by a depressed, closeted father who eventually committed suicide) in the prize-winning Fun Home, and detailed the funny yet poignantly truthful lives of fictional lesbian characters.

Are You My Mother? borrows some of its style and structure from Fun Home (it's sprawling and nonlinear, told in dual tones, and, most obviously, focuses on her insights into her parentage), but Bechdel creatively and cleverly avoids treading over any of the same ground. It's a quite impressive task, creating a memoir as epic and bold as this one and still infusing it with a unique freshness that is all its own. Throughout its pages, we still find new insights that build on what we've read in Fun Home but never rehashes it.

Much of the book, interestingly, is about itself, a delightfully self-referential exercise that mimics the real-life story of Bechdel's own development. Bechdel painstakingly struggles to write and draw the story and make all the pieces come together. Reading this struggle made me realize how brilliantly nuanced this book truly is. Bechdel dances on the edge of not one but two very dangerous storytelling canyons: First, a memoir about one's strained relationship with her mother risks being overwrought from the onset; second, doing a "metabook" about the struggles of writing a book can seem whiny and alienate readers if not done properly. Bechdel handles both of these with deft aplomb, creating richer ties with her reader as a result.

As always, Bechdel's work is solidly textured and deeply meaningful. It fits fine with a top-level, quick reading, but its truest rewards come from lingering on its pages and seeing the deeply rooted connections she's making. She pulls inspiration from a myriad of sources (writers, psychiatrists, lovers, friends, pop culture, therapists, how own work, and, of course, the words of her own mother) and she deconstructs and reconstructs them effortlessly. Somehow, the personal story of a woman whose life bears little resemblance to most readers' takes on universality and resonance through its specificity.

Her mother is intriguing and ultimately a very sympathetic figure. She is reticent to have her life analyzed and dissected, so Bechdel parses meaning from tidbits of information, scattered memories, and her own experiences. Ultimately, though, this is Bechdel's story, not truly her mother's. Bechdel spends the entire book documenting her search for meaning in the act of achieving personhood, and through that, she attempts to create multiple mother figures. But the actual mother she has, and the one she finds within herself, are the ultimate rewards for her quest.

Reviewed by John Hogan

Wow! I loved Alison Bechdel's "Dykes to Watch Out For," and read the comic series for many years. I found her previous book, "Fun Home," several years ago at the library, and was so impressed with this interesting and engaging memoir, written in graphic novel-type format. "Are You My Mother?" is sort of a sequel to that book, but stands on its own. Again, using graphic novel format, I think she did an even better job with this book than with "Fun Home." It's unbelievable how much STORY she packs into some very dense pages of drawings with some narration and speech bubbles. Bechdel chronicles her conflicted relationship with her mother through her direct interactions with her mother, from her childhood through the present, and intersperses these vignettes with sessions with her psychotherapists, relationship dramas with lovers, and then with her own analyses of psychological materials about the mother-child relationship, most particularly the work of Winnicott. That sounds like a strange combination, but being the artist she is, she weaves the parts together into a very coherent and interesting narrative and oddly, it works. I'm starting to read this for the second time through, because I felt like there was so much going on, that I needed a second time through to catch things I missed the first time.

I was able to borrow this book for free on my Kindle through the store Prime. It's certainly readable on a Kindle, but more challenging than a regular book to do so. I had to expand some panels to be able to read the type, which was a little distracting, but not terrible. I find graphic novels easier to read in book format, however, so plan to purchase the print format.

Whew... if you're looking for an introspective memoir, Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? IS the book you're looking for! What do I even write about such an in-depth memoir of Bechdel's relationship with her mother? I will never do her writing justice!

Full of feminism, poetry, and plenty of Virginia Woolf allegories, Bechdel attempts to showcase the reality of her complex mother-daughter relationship, as well as her own romantic relationships. She made me want to read up on all of the novels she tore apart to explain her own thoughts and feelings! Upon reading her memoir, I began an introspective search through my own relationships, familial and otherwise.

As an avid reader, I am pretty rarely challenged by the writing styles and information in novels, but Alison Bechdel definitely challenged me to expand my thinking. Even if memoirs are not your thing, you should give Bechdel a chance. I'll have to read Fun Home [her memoir of her relationship with her father]!

-Sarah
[...]

Following up on Alison Bechdel's first exploration into her family history called Fun Home is Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama. The first book looked at her relationship with her father, a closeted bisexual who commits suicide, as she is coming out as a lesbian. This second excursion, as the title suggests, examines her relationship with her mother, but also the love relationships in her life, her connection with her psychoanalysts, and her reading of the works of Sigmund Freud and D. W. Winnicott.

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel is the first graphic novel I have read, and I ate it up in less than a day. If it had been an all-text book, I probably would have hated it. As it is, I found it to be a real treat.

Some people didn't like this book and some did; interestingly, the reasons seem to be the same. It is thoroughly introspective and candid. (Key words from critical reviews: "masturbatory," "TMI.") Each section of the book opens with a dream and with the author's interpretation of the dream. It gives total credence to the psychoanalytical process. It makes constant reference to literature, some of it rather abstruse. The narrative is temporally fractured; it jumps dizzyingly through time and place.

Perhaps in order to like this book you have to like coincidences and connections. Maybe you have fun getting visual cues, or you like Where's Waldo? Maybe you've tried to make sense of your past, and you know that may have nothing to do with putting events in order. Maybe you've pondered the difference between fact and truth. If any of that is like you, then you will probably like this book.

It is not necessary to understand the literary references to enjoy the story. The author does a pretty good job explaining and clarifying all the allusions, many times with handy circles and arrows. Nor is it necessary to believe in any of the psychological ideas that the story leans on so heavily. (Personally, I think most of the theories are crap - so what? They related quite fascinatingly to Bechdel's story.) You do have to have a certain patience with the author as she mucks through her own psychological challenges, such as persistent self-criticism.

Part of what gave me this patience was the wonderful art, which kept reminding me of Goodnight Moon, so lovely and simple, yet rich with detail. It made the story totally accessible.

Reading this novel is like putting together a 4-D jigsaw puzzle (the fourth dimension being time). Or even 5-D, if the 5th dimension is imagination, literature, or the subconscious. This book is easy to look at and easy to read; you just turn the pages and let this interesting, beautiful, strange, familiar, ever-changing puzzle of a story put itself together in your mind.

Then you will most likely relate to this book. Bechdel aims her peerless cartooning skill at her personal experience with therapy and her relationships with women, starting and ending with that favorite topic of psychoanalysis, mom. Comics are a very useful form for this sort of historical/philosophical primer-biography/memoir hybrid (see also The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale,Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth,The Complete Persepolis), and Are You My Mother? is a worthy addition to that tradition, if not one of the premier examples of it.

The artwork is gorgeous, and adapts and flows to tell the story perfectly. The book is meticulously designed and plotted, down to the title referencing a book by Theodore Geisel protege P.D. Eastman when Bechdel focuses on Suess' Sleep Book. Every detail pays off or is drawn back in to the narrative, much like a course of psychoanalysis.

But in the end, your enjoyment and appreciation of this "comic drama" will most likely depend on your interest in the philosophies of Freud and Donald Winnicott or your ability to identify with a neurotic artist's quest for personal understanding.

This heavy, unfocused, somewhat dreary "graphic memoir" (I suppose that must be the term) contains no actual story, unless you find plot and drama in the account of someone else's largely uneventful psychoanalysis. (It wasn't uneventful for Bechdel, of course, but that is precisely the point. Bechdel makes quite clear in Are You My Mother? that she believes the specifics of individual suffering can be transformed by art into a universal message--a belief shared by thousands if not millions of other writers whose work similarly misfires. Unfortunately, though that solipsistic strategy may be a necessary condition for certain kinds of creative writing, it is not a sufficient one, and Bechdel's suffering remains essentially meaningless to anyone who isn't Bechdel, as do the constant, intrusive snippets from Freud, Winnicott, Melanie Klein, Alice Miller, Adrienne Rich, and Virginia Woolf. In fact, all that obsessive quoting (because you *must* understand, don't you see, precisely what Bechdel was thinking about her relationship with her mother at every single moment in her various therapies) gives the project a sense more of commonplace book than of memoir, of bellybutton-gazing more than enlightenment, of obsessive, not entirely consensual "sharing" of family minutiae more than a careful writer's judicious sifting of experience. Bechdel's fairly benign relationship with her fairly benign mother remains an entirely internal drama that Bechdel tries womanfully to render external (here's the gist of it, and spoiler alerts aweigh: they have boundary issues). Her mother is not crazy or violent or blatantly neglectful enough to have been a monster or an eccentric; in fact, her major sins seem to have been two: first, she was a textbook narcissist and, second, she wasn't wild about the idea of having a lesbian daughter. So, as they say, sue me. What becomes painfully clear is that Bechdel was trusting in some sort of Tolstoyvian grace note to redeem this sprawling, unfocused, and occasionally incomprehensible memoir (on the theory that her unhappy mother-daughter relationship must have been uniquely unhappy, but it wasn't; it was just normally unhappy). Alternatively, what may be true is that all the genuinely interesting family weirdness and psychopathology resided in her father--presumably closeted and presumed suicide--who is the subject of Bechdel's fertile and rather brilliant Fun Home. What Fun Home also had going for it, it's worth saying, is that it was sweetly, ironically, bitingly funny; despite its subtitle ("A Comic Drama"), the lack of any discernible sense of humor menaces Are You My Mother? like a squall line. Alison Bechdel is so smart and so talented and so young (as seasoned writers go; she's barely in her fifties), and she's only going to get better. Here's hoping, with this book, that she's finally gotten her family out of her system.

This is a graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel, author of "Fun Home." This memoir is about Alison's relationship with her mother. There are a lot of references to Freud and another psychologist, and Virginia Woolf. I really wanted to enjoy this book but felt that the near constant references to psychological issues were tedious and too heavy-handed. I liked this book, but I liked her first book, "Fun Home" better.

While my folks didn't face the kinds of challenges Bechdel's did -- and therefore didn't express the same level of need from their kids -- the story resonated. I feel like I have a better grip on my own life and where I came from than I did before the book, and how many books can give you something valuable like that?

The art is fantastic, Bechdel's self-deprecating humor and deadpan narrative are marvelous, and the deft interweaving of the different narrative strands (all present, of course, simultaneously in Bechdel's head) give insight both into the creative process and the process of becoming a full human being. They are, after all, kind of the same thing.

Wonderful, recommended.

Let's say your parents were abusive or absent, to the point of inflicting severe trauma; now what? Until reading this book, the most useful starting-place I had ever found was The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller. Miller bills herself to some degree as a popularizer of the work of Donald Winnicott. This book goes Miller one further, conveying the kernel of Winnicott's insights in an even more accessible and personal way. Bechdel includes biographical information about the private life of Winnicott, Virginia Woolf and others that de-ivory-towers the sometimes daunting academic tone of most books on psychology into something everyday people can easily draw value from. She points to the work of Alice Miller and others in helpful way that makes this book the single best all-around springboard into mental health for the deeply traumatized I have ever come across.

For the many reviewers who found this book disappointing compared to Bechdel's earlier Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, I agree with their basic argument: this is less of a story, more like nonfiction with bits of autobiography. If you weren't severely traumatized throughout childhood, if you're not carrying a deep wound in your soul, this book is unlikely to click deeply with you. Count yourself lucky! For those of us still burdened by severe trauma well into adulthood, this is like manna from heaven.

Alison Bechdel's latest graphic novel is terrific. The book is appropriately not titled "About My Mother." This is not primarily a biography about the author's mother; rather, it is more an introspective multi-media recounting of the author's perceptions and understanding of her mother and her relationship with her mother.

The quotes on the back of the book jacket, from the authors Jonathan Safran Foer ("Everything Is Illuminated" & "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close") and Gloria Steinem are fitting, because the book's narrative structure is a complex metabook, interweaving different timelines and narrative voices (like a Safran Foer story), and the book is infused with ideas similar to ideas long championed by Steinem.

This is a story of one lesbian's relationship with her mother. The book is also a retelling of Alison Bechdel's extensive reading into psychoanalytic theories (of Freud, Jung, and particularly the lesser-known Donald Winnicott) and how she has interpreted her relationships and development using psychoanalytic theories. Much of the book is an enjoyable survey of some of the developments and debates within psychoanalysis.

I loved this book. I also loved the book's predecessor "Fun Home." They are two of the best books I've read from any category: graphic novel, novel, non-fiction, or compilation. Advocates of the graphic novel medium have long argued it should be included with more commonly perceived "serious" literary formats. Bechdel's two memoirs are two great examples why the graphic novel format should be considered on the same level with other literary formats. She capably uses the multi-media format's efficiencies, clarity, and simultaneously-layered complexities.

Some nurturing, feminine, and affectionate mothers of lesbian daughters might be cautious or take issue with this story, because Bechdel's narrative fits into assumptions and stereotypes that were sometimes used in the past by behavioral theorists to explain why a young woman's environment (with a lack of affection from the mother at a young age, coupled with latent, quiet, or unspoken hostility toward the daughter) might "cause" a daughter to become a lesbian. Doctors and therapists sometimes attempted to make mothers feel guilty about their parenting choices and techniques, suggesting the mothers' behaviors contributed to their children's "choice" to become gay. Bechdel's tale could easily be turned (perverted) into support for that kind of theory.

As with most memoirists, Bechdel tells a story that portrays herself in a positive light. Sure, there are some warts shown, but I suspect Bechdel left many of her personal failings unmentioned. In the loose timeline of this book, which covers her whole life, she admittedly is a serial monogamist. There's nothing inferior about being a serial monogamist when compared to being a singular monogamist. While Bechdel recounts affairs she had, we don't fully understand her relationship shortcomings with her significant others. We see her angry. We see her wanting to see other people. But we don't get a clear understanding of why or how her romantic relationships developed or why they fell apart. And while this kind of critique might often be misplaced, this book is specifically a memoir focusing primarily on the author's relationships and relationship theories. I would have liked more revealing observations on those primary topics. In this book, they are often omitted or treated with kid-gloves.

Which leads to something very positive about this memoir: Bechdel does not write, as her mother refers to in this book, a memoir about "Oh, you know, inaccuracy, exhibitionism, narcissism, those fake memoirs." While no memoir can ever be "the whole truth," I get the sense this memoir is at least "nothing but the truth" - even if it, like all writing, is selective in what is included and what is left out. Bechdel also consistently takes considerate care to conceal the identity of people in her past who are still alive and may not wish to have their private matters publicly discussed from one point of view.

When evaluating Bechdel's self-analysis, I admire that she is very selective, not trying to solely follow any one therapist's theories. Nor does she solely try to interpret and frame her life through the religious frameworks handed down from her family. While I admire her intelligent and discriminating selection of different ideas from different theorists, I sometimes felt she was always looking for ideas from outside of herself - as if for an idea to be valid, it had to come from some other brilliant person's body of work - whether it be Virginia Woolf, Winnicott, or some other artist or playwright. Sometimes it felt like she was writing an essay to explain her philosophies, and to give her chosen ideas sufficient support, she felt she had to make regular "appeals to authority," frequently quoting and citing the ideas of some famous writer. I'd enjoy a book where she did even more synthesis to express her best ideas in her own, carefully crafted words.

I'm not sure, like any person or patient, that Bechdel makes the best conclusions about her own life. She regularly tries to interpret her life's events by fitting them into someone else's (often psychoanalytic) speculative theories or paradigm. As I read the book, I thought: A very educated modern therapist may be able to make some more accurate conclusions about Bechdel, from the wealth of introspective data Bechdel provides, than Bechdel has yet made about herself. But this maybe could be said about any good, complex, and introspective literary work.

It's interesting that Bechdel regularly heavily looks to or relies upon psychoanalytic theories to attempt to understand and interpret her relationships with others. Of the long-standing therapeutic theories, psychoanalysis, especially its early theories, turned out to be more speculative than scientific. Bechdel writes "Freud had been out of fashion when I was in college." I'm not sure that accurately explains why psychoanalysis was not being commonly taught. Freud was not simply "out of fashion" - as if the study of psychology was something left to popular opinion. Freud's speculative theories had been either thoroughly discredited or had fallen into a category of "not provable or verifiable using scientific or empirical methods."

Freud still is seen as an interesting writer and as someone who correctly suggested sexuality should be considered as a stronger factor in understanding human drives and behaviors than generations of cultural messages had previously belittled. But his Oedipal theories and many of his other speculative theories about human motives and drives have not stood up to peer review or the tests of time. So, I'm not sure trying to make sense of your life, by trying to interpret it through a psychoanalytic theory, may be the healthiest route. For example, even Winnicott, who Bechdel seems to favor more than other psychoanalysts, had some suspect methods and interpretations. While he was very creative and probably a great listener, creativity is not always the healthiest path to shaping good behaviors or determining better parenting or relationship skills.

When good people try to make sense of their relationships by trying to fit them into invalid paradigms, such as "Oedipal Complex" theory, inaccurate and unhealthy conclusions can be made. In Bechdel's case, she thinks Winnicott's theory that "The subject must destroy the object. And the object must survive this destruction" has weight, and she both explains and rationalizes her creative and interpersonal actions using that framework. Personally, I'm just not sure the "destruction" has to take place in our primary relationships.

In the final and concluding chapter of the book, Bechdel also seems to find some merit in Dorothy Gallagher's theory about memoirists: "The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her story. Not, you may note, to serve her family, or to serve the truth, but to serve the story." I don't think I can agree with that assertion. But I can see how the idea might be appealing to a psychoanalyst or a believer in psychoanalysis. Traditional psychoanalysis, like religion, often required a follower to interpret their life through a pre-existing paradigm - often requiring a leap of faith into an unproven theory.

In contrast, I think a writer, scientist, and therapist's priorities should include serving the truth, the family, and the greater community. Sigmund Freud's (the patriarchal psychoanalyst) theories may be interesting and imaginative, but it should be noted that even after he achieved great acclaim, fame, and wealth, four of his close, younger relatives committed suicide - and even though he used his wealth and connections to get himself, his wife and his children out of Vienna during the Nazi occupation prior to WW II, he was unable to first get his 4 sisters out, and they all ended up being murdered in concentration camps after he left. Freud may have been powerless in all these close events - and he did not do the eventual harm. But sometimes I'm as interested in the health of the people closely around a believer of a particular therapeutic theory as much as I'm interested in the health and well-being of the believer. I want to know the benefits and detriments that happen to a person's community as a result of their beliefs as much as I want to know how the beliefs effect a specific believer's life. Like a self-serving memoirist who seeks to support "the story" more than "the truth," Freud's interpretations of his patients' dreams and narratives, were often interpreted only in ways that supported, or could be argued to be consistent with, his original hypotheses. He favored loyalty and praise over scientific verification - and when a writer's priorities are in that order, the results can often be, at the least, misleading. At worse, very dangerous.

I love that this book is a visual feast and an easy to follow introspective exploration. As with any good writing or fiction, it's not essential the protagonist draw all the correct conclusions or find all "the best" answers. Often, the sincerity and artful depth of the investigation is more than worthwhile. This book is ultimately about finding good qualities in those around her and making them known to others. And in that regard, Bechdel succeeds.

While I respect was Bechdel was trying to accomplish here, she makes the reader into yet another therapist, in addition to those she has within the story. Oddly we're now paying her to be her therapist so there's something very big at play within this graphic novel. Unfortunately her main point is lost with all the moving pieces that she presents us. Part autobiography, part literary critique, it never seems to find a distinctive voice or central narrative arc.

Alison Bechdel, noted cartoonist, hit the big time with laurels for her previous graphic novel, Fun Home. Fun Home concerned her life and her relationship with her father - a homosexual who died after he was hit by a truck. It was full of emotional depth and laughs--and really put the rest of her family in the background.

Bechdel remedies that by writing another book about a family member and growing up and stuff. Where the primary highlighting color in Fun Home was a bluish-green, the primary color in Are you My Mother is red. Take what you want out of that, I'm no color theorist. It also primarily deals with her relationship with her mother. I should be more specific - it is about her relationship with her relationship with her mother. That might not help, but this text is more introspective than Fun Home. More of it focuses on the Adult Bechdel and dealing with her childhood than with the actual childhood itself. Two separate therapists have big roles. As do theorists of therapeutic techniques. If you don't have the background, it might go over your head, like it did mine.

Bechdel had a complex childhood, and life which she has made an open book through her strips and novels, but for some reason this one feels the most self-indulgent if only because it feels like the most serious thing I've read by her. It lacks the edge of humor that makes Dykes to Watch Out For and Fun Home....well, fun. I'm not saying that it's not good, but that it didn't meet my expectations based on other things of her's I've read. I wouldn't recommend this as the first book to read by this talented author.

I recently read Bechdel's _Fun Home_ and it simply blew me away. It happens to be a graphic novel (and the art is first-rate) but it could just as easily have been a text-only memoir about the author's early years in what we refer to in shorthand as a "dysfunctional family," and it would have been equally successful. Alison and both her parents were/are intellectuals -- widely read, heavy theater-goers, at home with literary analysis, and with a tendency to think deeply about things. Her father was also an abusive bisexual who had run-in with the law and who eventually committed suicide-by-bread-truck -- probably. Alison herself discovered at the end of her adolescence that she was a lesbian, though in retrospect the clues were pretty obvious in her earlier life. That first book was her attempt to explain, or perhaps to liberate herself from her father and his memory and the result was nuanced and deeply insightful.

When I learned of this new sort-of sequel, I grabbed it immediately, but, . . . well, it isn't the same sort of book at all. And while certain parts of it are equally fascinating, I'm not sure I can consider it a success. For one thing, it's only partly a parallel to the first book as an attempt to explain the author's mother (who is still alive and kicking). It's actually, perhaps mostly, an overview of the life and ideas of Donald Winnicott, an innovative British psychoanalyst who lived until 1971 but whose roots were deep in the Freudian Golden Age and whose field of study was small children and the ways they relate to the objective, external world. Another major theme is the author's progress through a lifetime of analysis therapy herself, during which she sometimes comes off as more the analyst than the patient. And another is her struggle to write _Fun Home_, which cost her a great deal of psychic sweat -- especially trying to get her mother to accept the idea. And yet another theme is Virginia Woolf, whose novels and essays Bechdel obviously thinks very highly of, especially _To the Lighthouse_.

Part of the problem is me. I have a good education, several degrees, and more than three decades of experience as a librarian, which means a broad knowledge about a variety of fields of thought and endeavor. Among many other things, I've read most of the essential works of Freud and Jung over the years -- and however hard I try, I've just never been able to accept that sort of thing as having an real-world validity. So much psychoanalysis, especially of the Freudian variety, seems forced and self-indulgent. That's true of most of the insights (. . . I'm trying hard not to go back and put that word in quotes . . .) that Alison apparently reaches, too. I mean, what exactly is "the True Self" supposed to mean, anyway? Is patching a hole in a small kid's jeans really "an act of renewal and transformation"? When my mother did that, it was a act of budget-management, and I think I knew it.

Sorry, it just all seems a stretch to me, and it makes the author seem to be somewhat in the throes of an odd sort of addiction. For all those reasons, this book just doesn't grab hold of my mind and heart the way the first one did.

Like many of the reviewers here, I loved Fun Home, but this book does not live up to its promise. I think at least a third of the book depicts Bechdel talking to therapists, and a significant amount focuses on her dreams. I'm sure Bechdel sees these as important, but there is little that is less interesting than other people's dreams and therapy sessions. The relationship with her mother comes out mostly in these therapy sessions. But the strongest parts are when she actually depicts herself in interaction with her mother - in her childhood and adulthood - and also her mother's life before Bechdel was born. I wish this had made up the bulk of the book, but it doesn't. Also, the book relies a great deal on psychological texts, which are rather tiresome to read even in the short bursts she gives us. I'm really sorry to have to write such a negative review. I think Bechdel is brilliant, but this book is just not that good.

This book was quite a departure from my usual reading; I have read parts of other graphic books, but never read one from start to finish. I won this book from GraphicNovelReporter.com, and was very happy to have it. I became interested in the story the author was telling, about her childhood, her relationship with her mother, and other relationships, with therapists and lovers. And I loved the drawings. Ms. Bechdel has been a cartoonist for many years, and is quite talented. Interwoven through this recounting of her life are quotes from several different psychoanalysts, whose statements the author includes as she explores various aspects of her own life. This was the only part of this book I found somewhat disjointed; interspersing these quotes seemed to be a way to create some distance from the strong emotional content of the story. Structuring her story this way made me as a reader feel more detachment from her story than I would have otherwise.
That being said, I really enjoyed this book and the drawings, and hope to read more by this author/artist.

If you love drawings, indulge yourself in these. The few lesbian erotic drawings capture the nice girl version. Exceptional b&w night landscapes.

If you love therapy this book should have you wallowing in hog heaven.

I have no qualms with examining your life. It is all any of us have so the secrets have to be hidden therein. Bechdel seems satisfied with the return in personal insight she got for an enormous amount of expense (she borrowed money to continue therapy), thought and reading.

Her book makes me feel like for the amount of effort you probably will not get enough of what you need soon enough from therapy. Example: Look at the frustration Bechdel experienced at the amount of time it took her to finish these drawings. Or look at your brilliant friend who started therapy because she procrastinates. She loves therapy and her therapist but 20 years later she still procrastinates, to her detriment.

About her mother...she's an actress. She created drama by having 3 children with a gay man who could, at any moment, leave her stranded. You bet she took good care of his house.

Bechdel wrote a script, like a brave, defiant warrior (considering that Mom is still alive and aware of what it would cost her gave permission to write it). She has surpassed her mother and that is how it is supposed to be. Oh wait. That is what the therapist said. Art schools tell students to make art as if your parents are dead. I say author is nice and loyal and only going to push it so far. The book had to wait until Mom is dead.

Long road but she arrived at this one destination. The book is in print. Onto the next or hangout here as long as it takes to get her feet under her again.

Resignation that she is off to try out a new woman at the end. She doesn't seem particularly interested in another girlfriend. Her girlfriends keep running off to find someone who wants to be in bed with them. Can't think of anything else to try? The search for self-understanding has to have more possibilities than another lover. It's not Home yet.

I loved Fun Home just like everyone else, but this left me much colder. The artwork is great -- but the writing doesn't digest the psychology the way that Fun Home digests and reworks literary texts. Perhaps Bechdel ought to have a) waited until after her mother's death to write this book, or b) not tried to tackle a whole new field to write it. I would teach it in a class on mothers and daughters and/or psychoanalysis, but I don't want to read it again for pleasure. And that's sad.

Regardless of one's views of psychodynamic theory re: the origin of depression, this book has more insights into process of psychotherapy & into family dynamics than most textbooks. Plus it is a total pleasure to read! For those who think it may be another case of "blame the mother," I urge you to read it to the very end. Alison Bechdel is - at least as a writer - "adorable."

If you only want to read about spicy/unusual details of how a woman deals with her husband's homosexuality, sorry, this book isn't for you: it will be just a disappointment, as it has been to the average readers, expecting a "Fun Home II - now is the mother's turn". But if you have a curious mind and wish to follow Bechdel in her almost-sherlockian search of her "true self" and the meaning of her dreams, you will love the way she puts together all the pieces of her intimal history in a full picture that mirrors the universal symbols of the human growth process.

Our famous (and also artistically talented) lesbian heroine who looks like an adorable young man in her middle years, goes through a whole parade of girlfriends, therapists, philosophers, and all kinds of books (including Dr. Seuss!) in desperate attempts to find out the mysterious reason for her mother's rather haughty attitude toward her.

But the answer here is quite simple: real life is not all that simple. This means motherhood isn't all rosy baby toes and powdered diapers that still allows the new mom freedom to fulfill her dreams, your darling husband could suddenly swing the other way (and so can your kid!), and your "true love" wouldn't show up naked on your doorstep one magical night to remain faithfully at your side for the rest of your days. Simple as that. :)

Bechdel's skill is even more cutting and refined in this sequel to her first memoir. I found myself dragging my feet about 100 pages in because I just didn't want the book to end. It's beautifully written, so thoughtful and deeply personal.

Bechdel weaves a fugue intertwining the themes of parenting, psychoanalysis and childhood memories. THis is a complex book, reminding me of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in Aflat minor. If you dont like that, you may not like this either.

Bechdel has somehow topped herself in Are You My Mother? Fun Home, her previous memoir, was one of my all-time favorite memoirs (not just graphic novels), and yet her new meditation on family is deeper, darker, and funnier. Even if you don't get into the whole "graphic" thing you should read it. It's fantastic.

This is enjoyable, but pales in comparison to her previous work, Fun Home. The Kindle version also has resolution problems with some of the text being rendered illegible by the format. I might have been able to rate it four stars if I hadn't had to struggle just to read it.