Spent

The celebrated and beloved New York Times bestselling author of the modern classic Fun Home presents a laugh-out-loud, brilliant, and passionately political work of autofiction.
In Alison Bechdel’ s hilariously skewering and gloriously cast new comic novel confection, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war. She wonders: Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege?
Meanwhile, Alison’ s first graphic memoir about growing up with her father, a taxidermist who specialized in replicas of Victorian animal displays, has been adapted into a highly successful TV series. It’ s a phenomenon that makes Alison, formerly on the cultural margins, the envy of her friend group (recognizable as characters, now middle-aged and living communally in Vermont, from Bechdel’ s beloved comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For).
As the TV show  Death and Taxidermy  racks up Emmy after Emmy— and when Alison’ s Pauline Bunyanesque partner Holly posts an instructional wood-chopping video that goes viral— Alison’ s own envy spirals.   Why couldn’ t she be the writer for a critically lauded and wildly popular reality TV show… like  Queer Eye. . . showing people how to free themselves from consumer capitalism and live a more ethical life? ! !
Spent’ s rollicking and masterful denouement— making the case for seizing what’ s true about life in the world at this moment, before it’ s too late— once again proves that “ nobody does it better” (New York Times Book Review) than the real Alison Bechdel.