The Twelfth of Never

by Louis Nowra

Louis Nowra is an acclaimed playwright, novelist and screenwriter. In this funny, razor's edge memoir, he looks back at a fractured a beautiful and demanding mother, whose standards could and would never be met; a father in love with long-distance; a mad grandmother; a hideous head accident; and a childhood filled with strangeness and obsessions. A moving and wonderfully original evocation of an unconventional boyhood, of growing up believing that aliens might just walk among us, and of the realization that to be normal is harder than you think.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Louis Nowra (born 12 December 1950) is an Australian writer, playwright, screenwriter and librettist. His most significant plays are Così, Byzantine Flowers, Summer of the Aliens, Radiance, and The Golden Age. In 2007 he completed the The Boyce Trilogy for Griffin Theatre Company, consisting of The Woman with Dog's Eyes, The Marvellous Boy and The Emperor of Sydney. Many of his plays have been filmed.[1]
He was born as Mark Doyle in Melbourne. He changed his name to Louis Nowra in the early 1970s. He studied at Melbourne's La Trobe University without earning a degree. In his memoir, The Twelfth of Never, Nowra claimed that he left the course due to a conflict with his professor on Patrick White's The Tree of Man. He worked in several jobs and lived an itinerant lifestyle until the mid-1970s when his plays began to attract attention.
His radio plays include Albert Names Edward, The Song Room, The Widows and the five part The Divine Hammer aired on the ABC in 2003.[2]
In March 2007, Nowra published a controversial book on violence in Aboriginal communities, Bad Dreaming.
Nowra has been studied extensively in Veronica Kelly's work The Theatre of Louis Nowra.
He resides in Sydney with his wife, author Mandy Sayer.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Chris Waterford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not interesting enough or written well enough to sustain my attention.
5.5/10

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

For the first 75% of the book I found the numerous stories fairly amusing, but the last 25% (his uni years & 'coming out'/self-recognition period) was sloooooww!
The manner that he writes is a little bit annoying. He is rather pompous & likes to use 'big words'. As well, he has a nasty habit of continuously sidetracking to another story whilst still in the middle of the first story, without any indications i.e. no new paragraph, font change, brackets etc. Maybe the lack of order was meant to be symbolic of the disorder in the writer's life, but to me it was damned annoying.

[Margaret Bell]

A most interesting life ... a fascinating book ...