I’m sure that you’ve heard this
before: The book is almost always better than the movie. But
have you ever heard anyone say, the book is always better than the
play? You’ll have your chance to decide this Friday May 23 at
the eBar when Alison Wearing will perform her award-winning one woman show Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found
myself remembering my past because of how perfectly Wearing captures
language and idioms. She also has a knack for remembering the behaviours
and little obsessions that make her characters, particularly her dad,
jump to life right there on the page. I feel like I know her academic
dad, who sang Gilbert and Sullivan songs in his French silk pajamas
and read Julia Child’s Mastering French Cooking while trying to
make a soufflé.
Although humour runs through much of
the book, there is also sadness and discomfort as the family
struggles to find its way through the coming to the surface of a gay
parent. Wearing's parents never really fought, retreating instead, and she
found herself hiding the truth about her dad for years. In one
particularly poignant passage, she remembers when she was quite young
how her dad cried while reading Anne of Green Gables with her. One of
the character’s fathers had died and it was here that her father
broke down. She knew that her father’s father had also died young
and she realized then that her father was not just a father, but a
person with a life beyond her.
Seeing a parent as a person with
foibles and history and heartaches does not come easily. Alison
Wearing has created a powerful story in the book. I have the feeling
that she will do the same in her play.
--Barb
Alison Wearing performs Confession of a Fairy's Daughter, presented by The Bookshelf and Eden Mills Writer's Festival, in the eBar Friday May 23 at 8:00pm. Tickets are available in the bookstore. Adults $15; Students and Seniors $12. Full event info can be found HERE.
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