Alison's father is a funeral director in a town so small he teaches part time to supplement his income. Both he and Alison's mother Helen are distant and emotionally unavailable leading to Alison's siblings and parents existing in the home behind the funeral home, the 'fun home' of the title in separate bubbles, like an artist's enclave. It is Alison's relationship with her father she focuses on in this brutally honest but gently wry and revelatory autobiography. He is a repressed homosexual obsessed with asthetisism, consumed with restoring their home to it's historical glory at the expense of his wife and children's own tastes and personal space. As Alison goes to college and discovers her own emerging homosexuality the truth about her father's affairs with boys comes out and she struggles with her deep love for a man unable to express affection for her. Compelling and well drawn.
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