Fairyland

by Sumner Locke Elliott

Growing up in pre-1950 Sydney, Seaton Daly accepts his gay identity but never finds love until his emigration to America as a successful writer compels a confrontation with his self-doubt, bringing him closer to finding true love

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Australia

249 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1990

About the author

Elliott was born in Sydney in 1917 to the writer Helena Sumner Locke and the journalist Henry Logan Elliott. His mother died of eclampsia one day after his birth. Elliott was raised by his aunts, who had a fierce custody battle over him, fictionalized in Elliott's autobiographical novel, Careful, He Might Hear You. Elliott was educated at Cranbrook School in Bellevue Hill, Sydney.

Elliott began acting and writing for radio during his teens, and showed signs of a promising career during his twenties before he was called for administrative military service in World War II. In 1948, Elliott relocated to the United States where he became a highly regarded television scriptwriter. As a fiercely intelligent and bold person, he made a name for himself, until the era of live television drama ended in the early 1960s.

Elliott remained in the United States for the remainder of his life, commencing a literary career in 1963 with his autobiographical novel "Careful He Might Hear You", which won the Miles Franklin Award and was subsequently made into a film. He published ten novels in total, several of which dealt with issues from his own childhood and experiences in Australia before the War. Although he increasingly developed a following among Australian readers, Elliott remained uncomfortable with his country of birth, in no small part due to his homosexuality, which had marked him out for difference during his youth. He spent his final years in New York City, dying of cancer in 1991.

For the final six years of his life, Elliott lived with the American writer Whitfield Cook. The two men had been close for several years, although the exact nature of their relationship has been disputed. Cook was a widower from a heterosexual marriage, however his most notable works included the homoerotic Alfred Hitchcock film "Strangers on a Train". Cook cared for Elliott until his death.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everybody my age knows the author Sumner Locke Elliott (1917-1991): he's the one who wrote the Miles Franklin award-winning Careful, He Might Hear You (1963) which was in 1983 made into a stunning film starring Wendy Hughes, Robyn Nevin and Nicholas Gledhill as PS. The novel is known to be largely autobiographical, so when we think of this author, we don't see him as an adult, we think of him as the impossibly grave small orphan boy over whom his aunts wage a bitter custody battle.

I suspect, however, that few of us know his other novels. Elliott left Australia for the US as a young man and never came back, but even the novels set in Australia are largely unknown. I have a copy of Water Under the Bridge (1977) but I'd never heard of Eden's Lost (1969). Dennis Altman, in the introduction to the Text Classics edition of Fairyland says the rest are 'almost without interest now'.

Fairyland, however, recently reissued in the Text Classics edition, is well worth reading. It's Elliott's 'coming-out' novel, published in 1990, and it provides a vivid picture of 'camp life' in Sydney in the 1930s and 40s, when homosexuality was illegal and therefore necessarily covert. It is a poignant yet sometimes rather wry story.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2013/09/14/f...

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The visual among you need to harken to "The Sullivans" (if you are Australian), "The Hour" (if you are British) or "Mad Men" (for the North Americans) for imagery of the era in question.
This novel had the perverse vicarious reading pleasure that can be gleaned from any semi autobiographical writer's work; But it would be difficult to devour without familiarity of the time, context and social mores of that era.

[Joey Diamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange and jolting book. The emotions are so intense and campily ridiculed too.
Some i read it for the local 1930s and 40s history - beat culture in Wynyard station, ilicit jaunts to the Blue Mountains for unmarried couples and even Arncliffe and Bexley showed up - right around the corner from where I'm living. Some I read to find out what happened to all the excellent minor characters. And sometimes I even cared about poor old Seaton the protagonist.
It was written in 1991 but it feels much much older, with so much unsaid, so many strange social customs. Also a lot of double entendres!

[Sean Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting as a portrait of gay life in 1930s-40s Sydney, but this book is so full of self-loathing and the typical 'dead queer' ending that you want to throw it across the room.

[Coan Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

A "coming out” book says the blurb for "Fairyland" by Sumner Locke Elliott. It was written in 1990 when the author was in his 70s . That would seem rather late in the struggle for recognition, but again, it is one of those lives which span a number of eras, and is valuable not least because of the light it shines on the past.

Certainly Sumner Locke Elliott has a way with words, and his descriptions of life in pre-war Sydney are rich and evocative. He manages to peel away various social strata with only the faintest shadow of humour. Much is painful, but also insightful. Without labouring the point, it is easy to see the chain of knock-on events encompassing the First World War, the Depression and the Second World War affecting the life a small boy and his development.

Both the writing style and the character of the writer are curiously passive, and ultimately, the book turns into a chain of sexual encounters which are sometimes relationships and sometimes not. His range of experiences of this type are interesting in themselves and generally seem to hinge on his physical appeal to other men.

His relationships with women are, almost predictably, two-dimensional, and the girls seem fated to die or marry into obscurity. There seems little doubt that the material, though cast in the third person, is autobiographical. In many ways the book is a revelation, and is certainly interesting with many fine passages. It works as a social history and even sheds some light on corners of our past.

His depiction of the war-wounded of all sorts, and of the male pub culture of the time, is painfully accurate. If there is any humour here, it is on a level which escapes me, unless it is to be found in the bleak observations of hypocrisy running through our society.

[Michael Pennington · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this Australian depiction of loneliness. The ending jarred with me, the hero dying alone without love, but perhaps was a reflection of the author's generation.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't really know anything about Sumner Elliott when I read this book, and I didn't know how much of it was based on his own life, but I liked and enjoyed most of the book - except for the ending which just didn't work for me - but, knowing more now about his life and times I can't bring myself to reduce points for what I thought were failings. It is so difficult to criticize writing that you don't feel works but is so clearly rooted on the author's time and, probably, experiences. I feel I have failed - I respect the book, enjoyed most of it greatly and will have to get down and read it again someday.

[Michael Burge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elliott's last novel was also his most courageous in that he freed himself of explorations on his troubled childhood and expressed himself as a gay adult, sketching a variety of obstacles that realisation led to. As he stumbles through various sexual encounters, which lead to no love whatsoever, main character Seaton Daly's optimism is gradually grated away. Critics and reviewers often misconstrue where this well-trodden gay pathway leads, for Seaton's destination is awkward, it is sudden, but, in its time and place, is devastatingly credible.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do not know why I continue to buy books that, well written though they may be, are downers. All the way through it was edge of unhappiness. Even when Seaton seems happy...it is like waiting for the other shoe to drop...you know nothing good is coming.

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Beautifully written and moving…an elegantly crafted novel of lasting importance.’
Dennis Altman

[Paul Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coming out story in 30s and 40s Sydney. A fine book, although a sad reflection of the times and the prevailing culture in Australia.

[Di · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairyland was written by Elliott in 1990 and the edition that I read republished by Text Classics with an introduction by Dennis Altmann. The novel, like many of his others, is semi-biographical. Part one depicts the life of a young boy who is orphaned and raised by a cousin. It is the story of working-class poverty, coming of age and homosexuality in Sydney in the between war years. Part one follows the life of Seaton Daly from school to his early life as a writer of advertising jingles and later radio. Like Elliott he eventually settles in America where he has a successful career as a writer for the screen and of novels. The early years are similar to the story also told in some of his other novels such as "Careful he might hear you" and "Water under the bridge". Part two, which is almost an addendum to the novel, confines itself to his success in America and ends with an unexpected twist in the very last paragraph.

[Wendy Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine writing and a vivid depiction of Sydney in the 20s,30s and 40's. Moving, melancholy and sometimes funny evocation of the life of a gay man in an intolerant and stultifying society. I did struggle with the ending, which although foreshadowed at the start of the novel, seemed rushed and a bit melodramatic. Reading this really made me want to go back to some of his other works.

[James Connolly · Rating 1 out of 5]

What is it with Elliott's inability to write a non-contrived plausible ending? The book is heavily autobiographical so I'm sure he had something more truthful to draw on than the melodrama he ended up with.

[Jayden Masciulli · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating glimpse into queer Australia in the 30's and 40's, with beautiful prose to boot. I found Seaton a bit of an empty character, pushed along by everything and everyone around him - but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

[Cathal Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yeah not bad. Not the happiest of stories, quite emblemic of early queer lit including Kill Your Gays trope, but I enjoyed Elliott's writing style for the most part.

[Suzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars. Not sure what I expected but this was a sad tale of unfulfilling relationships