Spent

Written by the celebrated, bestselling graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel, author of the modern classic Fun Home.

In Spent: A Comic Novel, Alison Bechdel returns with a satirical, deeply self-aware work of autofiction. The story follows a cartoonist — a stand-in for Bechdel herself — who runs a pygmy-goat sanctuary in rural Vermont, while the climate-challenged world and a society on the edge of civil breakdown swirl around her. 

As her first graphic memoir (about growing up with her taxidermist father) is adapted into a wildly successful TV show, she becomes consumed by envy and existential angst. The novel becomes her attempt to critique consumer capitalism and privilege — railing against society’s injustices, while simultaneously examining her own complicity, guilt, and longing to make a meaningful, ethical life. It is described as “laugh-out-loud,” “brilliant,” and “passionately political.”

“Truthful, rueful and delightful.” — Los Angeles Times