Description
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.
“Truthful, rueful and delightful.”—LA Times
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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Mariner Books |
| Publish Date | May 20, 2025 |
| Pages | 272 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780063278929 |
| Dimensions | 9.0 X 6.0 X 1.1 inches | 26.2 pounds |
About the Author
Alison Bechdel’s cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For expanded wildly for her family memoirs, the New York Times bestselling and Time magazine #1 Book of the Year graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical, and Are You My Mother? Most recently, The Secret to Superman Strength was named a New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2021. Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow, among many other honors.
Reviews
“Truthful, rueful and delightful.” — LA Times
“Spent’s mix of witty self-deprecation and queer countercultural sex romp is gleefully entertaining.” — The New Yorker
“Hilariously honest…Spent succeeds at skewering the absurdities and inconsistencies of [Bechdel’s] life as a progressive artist with a diverse group of friends.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Sharp, funny and beautifully drawn.” — People Magazine
“Spent is the best kind of autofiction, braiding together strands of the author’s career into a brilliant new creation... A sly social satire and a rollicking good time.” — Boston Globe
“Spent is the best kind of autofiction, braiding together strands of the author’s career into a brilliant new creation... A sly social satire and a rollicking good time.” — New York Times
“There’s something charming and funny on practically every page of Spent.” — Minnesota Star Tribune
“In teasing herself and her friends, Bechdel finds a new way to have fun with both.” — Washington Post
“There’s a real joy to seeing [Dykes to Watch Out For] characters return, their shapes a little baggier, their hair greyer, but their spirits the same.” — The Guardian
“How, for all these years, in a remote corner of Vermont and mostly stuck in her own head has [Alison Bechdel] figured out just what to say to us?” — Atlantic Magazine
“[S]elf-deprecating and delightful . . . Bechdel takes a gentle approach toward her well-meaning characters, but wields a razor-sharp scalpel when it comes to the indignities of modern life. For Bechdel’s fans, it’s a dream to see her skewer fame with such hilarious precision.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Thoroughly wonderful . . . 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.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Spent is a welcome return to the bickering polyphony of Dykes to Watch Out For, with each member of the ensemble acting as a zany spokeswoman for one of Bechdel’s many conflicting views. It is a pleasure to see Bechdel take up the satirist’s pen once more.” — Vulture
“If [Bechdel’s] characters are sad and bewildered by the state of the world, their frustration feels like a reassurance to readers who share it, and perhaps a gentle reminder that it’s easy to confuse being socially conscious with being self-serious…[Bechdel’s] genuine affection for her characters — with the possible exception of the one who bears her own name — gives Spent a sweetness that makes even its cheapest shots feel good-natured…” — New York Times Book Review
“[Spent] is very smart on the questions of what we do with our money, and our money and our morals. And it’s also just riotously funny.” — Kathryn Schulz, on The Ezra Klein Show
“Filled with Bechdel’s usual wit and humor, Spent is an enjoyable call out that interrogates the ways we all, including the author, fall short of our ideals.” — Dallas Voice
“Bechdel’s latest is a celebration of the joy and hope to be found in community, and the power only fiction has to expose a special kind of truth–literary and universal–that binds us.” — PEN.org
“Alison Bechdel’s new book Spent is like nothing she’s ever done before — and it’s like everything she’s done before all at the same time.” — Autostraddle
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