How it Feels by Brendan Cowell

Courtesy of: Danielle from The Book Nerd Club

From the back cover:
'I had no idea how free we were. That's how free I was'.
An old friend, a best friend, a first love and the dreamer Neil who connects them all...Over the next twelve hours, their lives will change forever - friendships will be broken, virginity lost, love unleashed and secrets buried. A decade later, one is dead, one is famous, two are getting married, and the truth is about to erupt. Wildly funny, brutal, tender and true, Brendan Cowell's electrifying debut novel is a devastating ode to youth, capturing the beauty of growing up by the beach, and the darkness which moves beneath its surface. Because this is how it feels.'


Review:
'How it Feels' is the perfect title for this book. There seems to be this new wave of Australian male writers (or at least it seems to be a new wave, but maybe they've always been there and I'm only just discovering them) who are willing to write about the experience of being male from a feeling point of view. There's been plenty of work done by other Australian men which describe confronting and shocking events that put a spotlight on the world we live in. Tim Winton is an example of this, an amazing writer who is willing to write about the things that people might not want to look at and see. But what these previous writers have done is describe the events, and in doing so tell a story. What Brendan Cowell has done is gone deeper. He has managed to take the events in the books and describe the feeling of them. In doing so he is writing much more than just a story, he is writing the truth.

This is a searing look at the experience of growing up as a young Australian man, the brutality of this life that takes innocent, beautiful young boys and turns them into damaged and damaging men. There is a lot in this book that is confronting. The events and the choices the characters make, but for this reader, what is really confronting is the feelings. There is this beautiful exploration of the notion that by wanting to run away from people and a place, what you are really wanting to run away from is yourself with these people in this place, and that this is actually impossible. That wherever you go, there you are. These feelings, these experiences are always with you, you can't escape them, and how unbearable that can be. The books asks 'Do you want to know what it feels like to be this kind of man, can you really bear it?' Suicide is a major theme in the book, and really, it's not hard to see why in some communities in Australia male suicide is so prevalent. Brendan Cowell uses the word 'rape' repeatedly throughout the novel, but not in its usual sense (as in sexual assault), which reinforces this idea of the suffering that men experience at the hands of other men and inflict on themselves.

Ultimately, despite the grimness of this tale, I found it to be hopeful and beautiful. I think it is part of the modern Australian psyche that men are in a time of change, where some of the elements of the older ways of being are no longer socially acceptable, and many young men have this experience of being left unguided and abandoned by older generations. I feel uplifted by this wave of men willing to write about the experience of being a man in such an honest and truthful way, to be able to show 'this is how it feels'. It seems to me to be the beginning of the way to push through the damage and dysfunction to find a path that is better. This is my favourite line in the whole book:

And then I think of Oscar. That buzzing ray of light and openness...What will he do when he gets here himself, and there is no one to tell him that it is ok not to know the way.

This is not a comfortable read, but it is an important one, and I highly recommend it.

Many thanks to Pan Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of the book for review.