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

It was the common bond of their commonplace assurances that held them together, and although at twelve years of age he was nor yet able to digest the significance of this, he had become quietly aware, perhaps ashamed, of his knowledge of growing secret antlers, possibly wings. That among these people he was a changeling. But not even to Essie, not even in a whisper or a dream, did he ever voice it. ‘I am different.’

Fairyland is a poignant and captivating semi-autobiographical novel that charts the narrator’s coming of age gay in Sydney during the nineteen-thirties and forties; his postwar move to America; his successful career as a writer; and his lifelong, unfulfilled search for love.

This tender and spirited novel traces the life of Seaton Daly, who grows up knowing he is different from those around him. fearing he is second-rate, but remaining true to himself and his quest for love.

From his first, cruel lover to the salesman who ends up marrying Seaton's best friend, Seaton falls in love with men who can’t love him in return. Condemned, he believes, to a solitary and loveless existence, Seaton takes comfort in the arms of whoever offers it. It is only when he leaves Australia for America that he is able to conquer his self-loathing and come close to finding the love he has searched for all his life.

‘After fifty years of secreting part of myself, writing Fairyland was like going to a psychiatrist, like fresh air coming into a room.’

Sumner Locke Elliott

Fairyland: A Novel

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