Fairyland
Text Classics
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The final book by Sumner Locke Elliott, the award-winning author of Careful, He Might Hear You.
Drawing heavily on Locke Elliott's own experiences, Fairyland charts the life of Seaton Daly, an aspiring writer coming to terms with his homosexuality in the repressive atmosphere of inner-city Sydney during the 1930s and '40s. Lonely and naive, Daly dreams of escaping to the 'promised land' of the United States.
Fairyland is an intimate, affecting, sometimes harrowing portrayal of a lifelong search for love. Sumner Locke Elliott's 'coming out' novel, it was first published in 1990, the year before his death.
This new edition comes with an introduction by Dennis Altman.
Sumner Locke Elliott was born in Sydney. His mother was the writer Helena Sumner Locke. She died of eclampsia the day after his birth, and the boy was raised by his aunts. Careful, He Might Hear You was Elliott's debut novel. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1963, was translated into a number of languages and became an international bestseller. In 1983 it was made into an outstanding film directed by Carl Schultz, starring Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin and Nicholas Gledhill. Elliott wrote ten novels in all. He won the Patrick White Literary Award in 1977. After a lifetime of concealing his homosexuality, he spent his final years living with his partner Whitfield Cook. Sumner Locke Elliott died in New York City in 1991.
textclassics.com.au
'Beautifully written and moving...an elegantly crafted novel of lasting importance.' Dennis Altman
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Growing up gay in Sydney, Australia, on the eve of WW II is the subject of this mannered novel, Elliott's ninth ( Edens Lost ; Waiting for Childhood ), which ranges from tender lyricism to grotesque satire. Son of an aloof mother who idolized his dead hero father, Seaton Daly is orphaned young. Seduced by another schoolboy, Seaton moves from one tremulous, unsuccessful affair to the next. Structurally the novel focuses on a gallery of men for whom Seaton yearns: Byron the narcissistic actor; baby-faced Milly Dick in a pink apron, offering to share his horsey wife; the authoritarian Captain Smollett; the nameless tough who lures gays only to brutalize them. Having created the juvenile radio series Fairyfish , Seaton eventually visits America as a playwright--a phase that the story hastily skims. He is a character fixed at a level of naive sensitivity in a gay world delineated as treacherous and transient. The novel's stronger segments include celebrations of male identity in enclaves like the Marble Bar and Gomorrah, a subway men's room. The explosive denouement seems arbitrary and unheralded.
