A review by lola425
Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father by Alysia Abbott

4.0

A lovely portrait of a unique father/daughter relationship. Abbott polishes up parts of the memoir, no doubt, but she also leaves enough of the grit so that you see how complicated the relationship really was. I found myself feeling angry at both father and daughter alternately throughout. One the one hand, Abbott's father was selfish (leaving her alone at a young age, treating her as if she were an adult, indiscriminate drug-use), he still sacrificed in order to be her father. He could easily have sent Alysia off to her grandparents, where she would have ad a rather ordinary, suburban existence. So was it selfish to keep her and love her or was it selfless, because while he didn't change much of his life to accommodate her, he did not live the completely free life he would have with out her? To have made the decision to raise her, in a time when there were no templates, no role models for a single gay father, speaks to his love for her. The personal is political we feminists like to say. What could be more political? More personal? What is better: ordinary or different? Abbott also doesn't spare herself in the memoir. She is honest about her own selfishness and anger, her desire to walk away when her ailing father starts to make demands on her. What child wouldn't be resentful: you left me to raise myself and now you want me to put my life on hold to help you die? Hard choices to make for both Abbotts, which regrets would you prefer to have?