‘Fairyland’ Review: An Effective Father-Daughter Weepie Set Against the Backdrop of the AIDS Crisis

Stories about the gay heyday of 1970s San Francisco — and the cruel chaser of the AIDS crisis the following decade — often hang on the notion of chosen family within the queer community: the bonds formed when blood ties are severed by prejudice. Studies of biological family, and parenthood especially, in that context are more unusual, which is what makes Alysia Abbott’s book “Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father” so moving. An account of her upbringing by a gay single father amid the LGBTQ liberation movement, and her subsequent nursing of him through AIDS, it balances an eager child’s-eye… Read Full Article