Willy Linthout’s only son, Sam, commited suicide in 2004. This remarkable, poignant work follows Linthout’s thinly disguised avatar, Charles Germonprez, through the awful months and years of grief following that tragic event. The lines between reality and fiction, perception and fantasy are blurred as Charles struggles to carry on living without his son, Jack. His wife is present in the strory only as an ‘off screen’ voice, emphasizing the developing gulf between the two bereaved parents, who are trying to cope in their own different ways, their marriage heading towards breakdown. Jack becomes a real presence as the silent, yet… Read More
Mother, Come Home
This is a beautiful book. The whole work is understated and subdued, from the cover to the promotional artwork at the end. An atmosphere of Ware-eque melancholy pervades it, the graphics are all somber colours and clear line style. A father and son struggle to come to terms with the death of the mother, an event that has plunged the father into a deep depression. As only children or oldest siblings are want to do, Thomas, the seven year old son feels great responsibility for much of what goes on, assigning himself a commanding and caring role. He has appointed… Read More
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) chronicles the events of Bechdel’s childhood in the early 1970’s and her entry into adulthood and homosexuality at university. Her father was a repressed, unhappy aesthete, trapped in family life in his home town in rural Pennsylvania, running the family funeral home and teaching at the local school to make ends meet. He was a closet gay who had affairs with young men an ended up in court for plying teenage boys with alcohol. His death, most probably a suicide, haunts the book, an “extended meditation on history, memory, identity and trauma”… Read More