Jeremy Fisher

Never heard of him – that’s the most common reaction when I mention Gerry Glaskin. Some Western Australians remember him, as they should: he was born and spent his last years there. Yet in between he was a bestselling novelist in the 1950s and 1960s. He was translated into French, German, Swedish, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Danish, and Norwegian. Doubleday commissioned him to write a book about northern Australia. He was also a prolific short story writer, with two published collections. All of this is documented in the appendix and reference list of Dare Me! So how and why has Glaskin been erased from the Australian literary consciousness?

The title of Jeremy Fisher’s latest tome is deceptive. This reviewer expected a zany children’s book. Actually, How to Tell Your Father to Drop Dead is a subdued look at masculinity in Australian history. The text comprises autobiographical fragments and short stories. Fisher recalls growing up in a culture where homosexuality was ‘invisible’. He describes the heady days of the Gay Liberation movement in the 1970s. The author remembers his relationship with his father. The older man is described as an Errol Flynn lookalike who, at the age of sixteen, killed a boar and whose body was (decades later) cremated alongside that animal’s tusks. There is a piece on gay male sadomasochism in Sydney’s western suburbs.

M.L. Stedman’s first novel was the subject of spirited bidding from several publishers when her agent put it up for auction in 2011. Stedman lives in London, where she has contributed to literary journals, but she is originally from Western Australia, where this book is set. Her three-part novel tells the story of Tom Sherbourne, a returned World War I digger who not only carries the guilt of survival but who is also estranged from his father and brother. They had expelled his beloved mother from the family home after she was caught in a dalliance inadvertently revealed by Tom.