Introduced by Andy Griffiths.
Adrian Sherd is a teenage boy in Melbourne of the 1950s—the last years before television and the family car changed suburbia forever.
Earnest and isolated, tormented by his hormones and his religious devotion, Adrian dreams of elaborate orgies with American film stars, and of marrying his sweetheart and fathering eleven children by her. He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.
A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy's Complaint.
About the Author
Gerald Murnane was born in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne, in 1939. He spent some of his childhood in country Victoria before returning to Melbourne in 1949 where he lived for the next sixty years. He has left Victoria only a handful of times and has never been on an aeroplane. In 1957 Murnane began training for the Catholic priesthood but soon abandoned this in favour of becoming a primary-school teacher. He also taught at the Apprentice Jockeys' School run by the Victoria Racing Club. In 1969 he graduated in arts from Melbourne University. He worked in education for a number of years and later became a teacher of creative writing. In 1966 Murnane married Catherine Lancaster. They had three sons. His first novel, Tamarisk Row, was published in 1974, and was followed by eight other works of fiction. His most recent book is A History of Books. He has also published a collection of essays, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs (2005). In 1999 Gerald Murnane won the Patrick White Award. In 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. In the same year, after the death of his wife, Murnane moved to Goroke in the north-west of Victoria.
Industry Reviews
'Unquestionably one of the most original writers working in Australia today.' * Australian *
'A Lifetime on Clouds delighted me: I was particularly admiring of the author's unfailing ability to say just enough and no more.' -- Les Murray * Sydney Morning Herald *
'Murnane draws out a great deal of comedy from the distance between what his hero does and what he dreams.' * Guardian *
'If you only ever read one Gerald Murnane novel in your life, I urge you to make it this one.' -- Andy Griffiths * in his introduction *
'Gerald Murnane had me hooked from page one of what is his second novel, A Lifetime on Clouds. Murnane's wonderful imagination (and perhaps parallels with his own Catholic schoolboy upbringing) is exhibited through the hilarious and sincere tale of teenager Adrian Sherd, whose mundane 1950s family life in Melbourne suburbia is supplemented by his own wild imagination.' -- Readings
`Murnane, a genius, is a worthy heir to Beckett.' * Teju Cole, Guardian *
