SPENT

The author of Are You My Mother? (2012) and Fun Home (2006) offers something that’s not quite a memoir and thoroughly wonderful.

We meet our protagonist, Alison Bechdel, when she’s been shocked from sleep by a shotgun blast. It’s her partner, Holly, trying to scare a bear away from the compost pile on their Vermont pygmy goat sanctuary. In addition to sharing a name, this character has a lot in common with her creator. Both are in middle age. Both made their names with a comic strip about lesbians. Both have written a much-lauded memoir in graphic-novel form. And both have seen their autobiographies refashioned by other artists. Bechdel the author could have written another story from her own point of view but, in creating an avatar, she gives herself some room to mess around, and the results are delightful. Alison the character is supposed to be finishing her next book, but she finds herself endlessly distracted. There’s her sister, who wants Alison to edit her manuscript. There’s a trio of old friends who have turned into a throuple. There’s the fact that Holly’s woodchopping videos and tool reviews are turning her into an Instagram influencer. And there’s the way Alison is trying to escape finishing her book by selling a reality show that’s kind of like Queer Eye except that instead of making people look better she’ll help them live more ethically within capitalism. As Bechdel lets the lives of her characters unfold, her words and pictures become the reality show. Alison and her friends are beautiful and ridiculous and ridiculously beautiful, and Bechdel is such a master of her craft that it might take a little while to appreciate what she does here.

Bechdel is incisive, tender, and funny—often at the same time.