Bryce Courtenay was a complicated man, especially in the eyes of his family. He started writing novels after a 30-year career in advertising, turning out a new book most years. His first novel, The Power of One, became an international bestseller.

Adam is his second son. A younger son, Damon, a haemophiliac who developed AIDS from a contaminated blood transfusion and died on
April 1, 1991, was the subject of Bryce Courtenay’s most emotional book, April Fool’s Day.

Adam writes that he loved and cleaved to his father before he became famous and had trouble recognising the man afterwards. Even when his three sons were quite small, they knew that the stories he told were what they called ‘Dad-facts’. A skilled exponent of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story, he even obscured his own scandalous beginnings in South Africa – which Adam didn’t learn about until his 30s. His son sees him as a disruptor in the world of books, writing that his blatant self-promotion is now the norm and his contribution to book-reading was enormous. Adam’s career in journalism was always scorned by his father. He has now written several Australian histories.

In contemplating his father, he believes he sought love and adulation from everyone and would do and say whatever it took to get it.

My Father Bryce is not a bitter book. Adam’s balanced the generous, loving man he knew as a child with the older man who could not countenance failure, sometimes belittled his own family, whose hero characters were often his own avatars and whose best advice was always: Dare to dream.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Courtenay is a Sydney-based writer and journalist. He has had a long career in the UK and Australia, writing for papers such as the Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the UK Sunday Times.

He is the son of Australia’s best-loved storyteller Bryce Courtenay and the author of several Australian histories, including The Ship that Never Was, Three Sheets to the Wind and Mr Todd’s Marvel.

Read more about his book here.