Alysia Abbott‘s memoir, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, chronicles her unstructured home life in 1970’s San Francisco with her artsy father, Steve, who battled drug and alcohol dependence and picked male partners who weren’t good for him. Meanwhile, Alysia believed it was her dad’s grief over the loss of her mom in a car accident that had made him “turn gay.”
“As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference,” states the Fairyland book description. “In her teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she befriended—fall ill as ‘the gay plague’ starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then France, her father comes to tell her it’s time to come home; he’s sick with AIDS. She must choose, as her father once did, whether to take on the responsibility of caring for him or to continue the independent life she worked so hard to create.”
Publishers Weekly: “…Abbott’s narrative balances idiosyncratic flourishes with universal emotions of anger, resentment, jealousy, and guilt. Decades after the fact, it is clear she continues to struggle with her failures as daughter and caregiver. Yet, her fragile resolution is more honest than a tidy, suggesting that the most’ outlandish’ parts of our stories—our own inadequacies—prove difficult to fully accept.”
The film Fairyland (2023), available now to stream, stars Scoot McNairy as Steve, Nessa Dougherty as child Alysia, and Emilia Jones (Ruby in CODA) as young adult Alysia. Such notables as Geena Davis and Adam Lambert are featured in lesser roles.
I found the trailer, seen below, more affecting than the movie itself (but I also did like/appreciate the movie):
Selected Reviews of the Film Fairyland
Guy Lodge, Variety, subtitles his review “An Effective Father-Daughter Weepie Set Against the Backdrop of the AIDS Crisis.” His conclusion, regarding the father-daughter bond portrayed: “At its most thoughtful, ‘Fairyland’ conveys a dual sense of loss — spanning personal loves and lovers, and whole historical moments and communities — in such small, sweet gestures as a head on a shoulder, a hand in a hand, a silence finally understood.”
Katie Walsh, The Wrap: “The emotion and intention behind the story, as well as McNairy’s career-best performance, make ‘Fairyland’ an astonishingly moving film and touching remembrance.”
Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com: “This is an honest, real movie about people living big lives during tumultuous times, and coming through damaged but wiser. Steve puts it best: ‘What seems most outlandish in our autobiography is what really happened’.”
