Alison Bechdel shines in graphic memoir 'Are You My Mother?'

In Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel poses an infinity of thought-provoking questions about women, literature, feminism, family bonds, psychology and the complicated relationship between therapist and patient.

Creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Bechdel wrote the 2006 graphic memoir sensation Fun House, which centered on her tormented and often tyrannical father. A Pennsylvania funeral director and married high school teacher, he was also a closeted gay man who probably committed suicide.

In her new graphic memoir, Bechdel seeks to understand her relationship with her mother, who is alive. The result is less Gothic than Fun House but no less fascinating. A retired teacher who writes and acts, the highly intelligent Helen was a better parent than her husband, though plenty weird. (She stopped kissing and hugging her daughter when Alison was 7.)

Bechdel draws on Virginia Woolf for illumination of her own mother-daughter issues. (Woolf's mother died when the writer was 13 and remained an obsession until Woolf completed her novel To the Lighthouse at age 44.)

Along with describing her life — her childhood, realizing she was a lesbian, various love affairs and her struggle to become a writer — Bechdel also details her sessions with two therapists over the decades, as she seeks to understand herself.

Two famous shrinks become obsessions: Alice Miller, who wrote The Drama of the Gifted Child, and British pediatrician Donald Winnicott, famous for his observations about "good enough mothers."

Though the description above makes Are You My Mother? sound like the summit of self-absorbed navel gazing, the book is a page turner, thanks in part to Bechdel's lovely and subtle illustrations. Bechdel's examination of her relationship with her mother also touches on the universal push and pull between mothers and children. Hallmark cards for Mother's Day or parenting guides never address the toll self-sacrifice takes on someone like the competitive and creative Helen.

Unconditional love? Not at this address. Though she encouraged Bechdel as an artist, Helen struggled with her daughter's sexuality.

And yet, the book's transcendent ending is Bechdel's expression of love for her own "good enough mother."