Germaine Greer goes on a search for information about her father, who was absent when she was growing up and distant when he returned. Interesting stuff about family history and being Australian.

I liked this a lot - the history and family stuff was great, and she muses a lot about identity and heredity and family history. ( )

After a delusional friend told me that I would be impressed by The Female Eunuch, I read most of Greer's books attempting to figure out why she is lauded for her intelligence and insight. This incredibly dull book, lavishly padded with irrelevant digressions (actually, I DON'T want to know how to cook a goat), exhausted my interest. If someone does want to see Greer at her best, I recommend that first half of her essay collection, The Madwoman's Underclothes.

Greer does find out that her father invented a background for himself, but I cannot say that I feel we have learned much about him. Greer can't decide whether he was remote because he was keeping secrets, or because he was away from her when she was small, or because she was a girl, or because he was shattered by his war experiences. We would be in a better position to judge if Greer had discussed her sister's relationship with their father. She tells us that her father favored her brother, although she doesn't analyze that too deeply either. I respect Greer if she is being considerate of her family's desire for privacy, but maybe she can't do that AND write a book like this.

After the things that I read about her contradictory statements about her family in Christine Wallace's Untamed Shrew, as well as her generally muddled thinking as shown in her books, I am skeptical that we have really learned anything about Greer, or about anything else, unless you count random remarks about eucalyptus trees.

Still, I suppose that Greer's admirers will want to read this. ( )