A Lifetime on Clouds
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15
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Average rating4
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.
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Masturbation: The Difficult One. Some find it difficult to talk about. Others find it difficult to do.
Not in this books case. 15 year old Adrian Sherd had no issue with either talking about, thinking about or practising this ancient art.
Adrian made many visits (at night) to America where he had many a romp with the starlets of the times, Jayne and Marilyn and Susan. He wondered how other regular sinners dealt with having to confess to so many visits to America. He worried about what the Saints knew. Was there news flashes in heaven that announced he had “...abused himself at 10.55 this evening”? Did his granddad see him and if he broke the habit would he have to hide from his granddad once in heaven.
He borrowed books from the library to see what female parts were really like. Famous statues were no help at all and this was of great disappointment. He was that caught up with the entire subject he was convinced that the protestant reformation was started by a priest who could endure celibacy no more. He gave serious thought about Irish lads doing it tough because there was nowhere to hide in the open fields of their treeless land.
But things changed as he met a girl on a tram and this changed his life as he sinned less and less and gave serious thought to his marriage to her, how they would live and how he would be the ideal Catholic husband that would work hard to protect her and Australia from communists and Protestants. He had deep meaningful discussions about Adam and Eve and how as a couple it would aid their sexual needs and wants and that would make them the ideal Catholic couple.
Gerald Murnane has written a very good book indeed that covered not only the very funny side of this issue but was an exposure of the fear drummed into young boys of the Catholic faith in an age gone by. Poor Gerald Murnane. If this was his youth at 15 years of age the poor fella must have been this quivering mess. Maybe writing this book was therapeutic. A gold star to whomever knows where I plagiarised the first line of this review from and another gold star to whomever brought this brilliant author to my attention. Recommended to Catholic men who recall the fear and guilt.
