Are You My Mother?

Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? is a brilliant graphic novel exploring her relationship with her mother.

A follow up in some ways to her wonderful book about her father, Fun Home, Are You My Mother? incorporates Bechdel's reading of psychoanalytic theory (primarily Winnicott, as well as Klein and Lacan) in her attempts to understand the flawed bond between herself and her emotionally withholding mother. In addition to theory, Bechdel entwines her readings of Virginia Woolf and Adrienne Rich to inform her understanding of her mother's artistic conflicts, as well as her own.

The chronology of Are You M Mother? is complex and layered, circling back on several different periods of her life, including different adult relationships and different therapists.

As much as I enjoyed this book, and as deeply impressed I was by the endeavor, I felt that something was missing, some real sense of who her mother was, or maybe more simply I just wanted a clearer more traditional narrative arc -- more of a story story.