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There's this moment in Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale where fifteen year old Elena gets a letter from her friend Lila. Elena is a diligent straight-A student, and Lila has been forced to drop out of school years ago. But Elena realises, to her horror, that Lila is a much better writer than she is. Her unique voice comes straight off the page: it's like listening to her talk. Elena feels everything she's ever written, every well-composed essay that her teachers have praised in class, is stilted and awkward in comparison. There's no life in them.

Well, reading Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is a bit like that. Bechdel ignores all the rules. It's a YA graphic novel, but it's written in a densely allusive literary style. It's impeccably tasteful, but it contains explicit images of young dykes getting it on with each other. It's a comedy, but some of the funniest bits are about her beloved father's suicide at the age of 43.

Most impressively, none of it feels forced, none of it feels like someone trying to impress you with their cleverness. There are many references to Proust, and Bechdel seems to have effortlessly internalised one of the key lessons of la Recherche: just do what you find interesting, don't worry if no one else understands. Though I think she has not had to wait as long as Proust did for the world to catch up with her.

Like Elena, I look at Fun Home and think: Damn. I don't know how to write at all, do I?