That emotional stance, together with the facts of the story, make the book impossible to put down. The clear-eyed account and equitable tone keeps the narrative both generous and engaging-and produces a memoir that reads both as a document of the time and a personal account of a daughter’s “mistakes,” ones for which she feels culpable-judging her father for his appearance and behavior and feeling ashamed because he is gay. Yet she never portrays herself as a victim of her father’s failures, and instead tends to shed light on her own transgressions. At four years old, for example, she’s left alone one night when Steve goes to a writer’s group at seven, she takes a bus to a strange part of town and is soon lost. Though always loved, she didn’t always receive sufficient care. What’s striking about this memoir is the accountability to which Alysia holds herself. Raised motherless by a young, talented, and emotionally vulnerable man-the artist, poet, editor, and activist Steven Abbott-the young Alysia eventually comes to see her father in a clearer light. It’s a perspective that defines the author’s early view of the father she saw as magical, powerful, and invincible. I wanted him to edit out my mistakes and many indulgences, with a sharp red pencil or a clean eraser.” I wanted him to shape me with his love and intelligence. I wanted to be his drawing, his novella, his most refined work of art. “The truth is,” Alysia Abbott writes in her debut memoir, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, “I did want to be my dad’s poem.
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