<p> In the course of this riveting account of the search for her
father's roots, Germaine Greer reveals that the ancient motto
of her family is Memor esto, or "Be mindful of your ancestors."
In her case, obsessed might be a more accurate adjective. Until
he died in 1983, a wasted shell of a man after serving in the
Australian army during World War II, Reg Greer had rebuffed
inquiries about his past. Germaine's mother seemed not to care.
But after her father's death, Germaine, best known as the
author of the 1970 feminist treatise The Female Eunuch,
embarked on an arduous three-year investigation of the man she
never did call Daddy in life. Her quest started with the few
details he had supplied to the army on enlistment, and it took
her from Australia, where she grew up, to Europe, India and
Africa, and down several exotic blind alleys.
</p>
<p> The search is more interesting than the man. While there is
genuine mystery and suspense as to his origins, even a gullible
reader may catch on to a colossal hint at the truth that
appears roughly a third of the way through the text. No matter.
This book is far more than a standard piece of genealogical
sleuthing. Half its fascination lies in chapters that describe
milieus rather than biographical detail. Frontier living in
Tasmania when Reg was a boy, the realities of pickup vaudeville
in the outback, the grim privations of war in Malta when he
served there, the ins and outs of selling jewelry or newspaper
ads or working military codes--whatever the father
encountered, the daughter has made her own.
</p>
<p> He was a natty charmer, and Germaine yearned for his
affection. But, probably because she was smart and naturally
skeptical, she got little from her wary father except
put-downs. Germaine educated herself, went on to a successful
career as a scholar, teacher and author. But the early slights--her father's callousness and failure to confide in her--still rankle, and she is zestfully candid about her
resentments. "Yippee!" she exults when a parental lie comes to
light, or "Gotcha!" Yet this glee is tempered by a deep
sympathy with the narrow possibilities of her father's life and
indeed with any form of struggle and suffering that people must
endure.
</p>
<p> Her skill and resourcefulness as a researcher are
formidable. No petty bureaucracy thwarts her search for public
records, no archive is too remote to pursue. When she uncovers
her unknown step-grandmother, she ferrets into the woman's
extraordinary life of generosity to waves of foster charges,
child by child. An account of the long siege of Malta during
the war is an eloquent memorial to the courage of a population.
In India, where Reg Greer visited briefly, she gives a
beguiling description of the pastimes of women in a comfortable
family. One lady chauffeured her to Devlali to investigate
local records sources, though she was innocent of auto gears
and seemed to know only how the horn worked.
</p>
<p> At the end, Greer mentions a book called Difficult Women
(1983) by David Plante, which contains a long section about
her. She hates it. But Plante has some points to make about
Greer's characteristic state of readiness, her far-ranging
competence: "She lived, not in the particular country in which
she was bodily, but in the general, problematic world which
obsessed her." Daddy, We Hardly Knew You is a vivid dispatch
