Faces In The Clouds by Matt Nable, Viking, $29.95.
This is a surprising book in so many ways. It starts as a sweet very recognisable family tale about twin brothers growing up in the relative safety of an army barracks life and the wonderfully strong family unit that binds them.
It then unfolds quite rapidly into a raw and at times shocking tale, all the time exposing the boys’ emotional development with such poignancy that you want to step in and give them a comforting hug.
At the beginning, 11-year-old Stephen is smart, adventurous and slightly annoyed by the limitations of his brother Lawrence, who is slow, clingy and emotionally draining. Their parents are devoted to both boys, but are acutely aware Lawrence needs special help and Stephen needs some independence from his twin.
Their world is immediate, intimate, intrinsically Australian and peppered with the sort of visual snapshots we can all relate to — outings to the local pool, the awkwardness of youthful flirting, running through sprinklers on a hot day.
Then tragedy strikes, leaving our mischievous pair orphaned and cast out into an unfamiliar and often cruel world. Their new existence with their godparents, new schools and a life beyond the army is confronting and filled with humiliations the twins are ill-equipped to cope with.
Their rites of passage into adulthood see Lawrence and Stephen grow apart, grapple with adolescent sexuality and issues of loyalty and guilt. Yet, all the time, a psychological — possibly umbilical — cord pulls them back into each other’s lives.
Matt Nable’s language is simple but incredibly descriptive and his skill is in digging deep into the psyches of both boys so that the reader feels every moment of pleasure and pain as acutely as the characters do themselves. Watch out for a deeply evocative and quite unsettling denouement.
About the author: Matt Nable Writer, actor and one-time NRL player Matt Nable lives with his wife and three children on Sydney’s northern beaches and was raised as an army kid, one of five, moving around Australia. He started writing when he was a child and says it became “quite compulsive” as he got older.
“The inspiration behind Faces In The Clouds was twin brothers I knew,” says Matt. “One of them went to school with me … the other attended a special-needs workshop. Part One is mostly set inside an army barracks and was very much to do with my experiences growing up on different barracks. I had such a wonderful and indulgent time writing about those things.”
This is Matt’s second novel and he has just completed a third, as well as a TV pilot and screenplay.
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