WE WERE NOT MEN: A NOVEL

What people are saying about WE WERE NOT MEN …

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“In my five years of owning a bookshop, this is hands down the most wonderful debut novel I have read. I can't recommend it highly enough.”
MARY MARTIN BOOKS

‘There is a demanding eagerness to this book that will draw you in and hold you captive. Make sure this is at the top of your reading list this year.’
T AUSTRALIA MAGAZINE

‘I am a big fan of Tim Winton and I think the greatest praise I can give this debut is that it has a Winton feel about it.’
GOOD READING MAGAZINE

’We Were Not Men is Campbell Mattinson’s debut novel – and what a debut this is … Mattinson’s characters are vividly imagined and richly nuanced, and you will fall in love with each of them.’
BETTER READING

‘This is easily the best book I have read in the past 12 months.’
MICHELLE, BOOKTIQUE

‘These characters linger long after you’ve read the last page.’
THE SUNDAY AGE

’We Were Not Men is an achingly beautiful novel, deserving of its comparisons with Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay and Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe.’
GRATTAN STREET PRESS

’Soul-restoring.’
TRENT DALTON

”This one reduced me to tears. It’s one of the most physically beautiful new novels I’ve seen in a long time and the story itself is an absolute gem.”
BEN HUNTER, BOOKTOPIA

“I felt every heartache, every triumph and everything in between.”
MICHELLE, DYMOCKS

‘Mattinson charts the rough terrain of grief with a tender, huge-hearted story of rivalry and love.”
MARK BRANDI

‘I cried through most of it and got completely caught up in the writing … The stand out thing for me though was reading a man writing about boys feeling emotion. I don’t think we see enough of that.’
SHARPEST PENCIL

‘We Were Not Men is a rare and precious gem.”
PHIL, DYMOCKS

’Campbell Mattinson’s first novel is likely to make a Boy Swallows Universe- sized splash in the Australian literary scene. Mattinson’s publisher has defied anyone to read the first 22 pages and then try to put the book down. I took the challenge and found myself absorbed in a big-hearted, deeply moving and immensely satisfying novel.’
LOU RYAN, READINGS

’Mattinson writes about swimming the way Winton writes about surfing.’
MARTENE, COLLINS BOOKS COTTESLOE

‘We can't wait for you to start turning the pages of this heart-warming and deeply moving story.’
BERRY NEWSAGENCY

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One afternoon in January 1990 I stumbled upon a newspaper article that would change my life. Ron James was dead. He’d been a hero to me in my teenage years, he lived in the next suburb, I used to see him running sometimes in the sun. As I read the article, in total disbelief, someone close-by stepped from their chair and ordered me to sit down. I can see, she said, that you’re really affected. I was and I always will be.

I started writing that night. I wrote for three days; I wrote my heart out. I then went to Ron’s funeral, or at least I tried to; there were so many people there that hundreds of us were left standing outside. Ron, who was one of twins, had been an Aussie Rules footballer for the Western Bulldogs (then Footscray) but was best known for one glorious game he played for VFL team Williamstown. It was a Grand Final, it was his first senior game, and he was only 14.

The thing was, instead of being over-awed, Ron did things in that game that no 14-year-old should reasonably be able to do. In short, he took the world on.

And then, at age 19, he’d died on the water, on a country river, in the blazing sunshine, having been flung into the trees in a boating accident.

What I’d started writing was not Ron James’ story; I didn’t and don’t know it. But it was inspired by it. I’d started writing a story about twins, and a river, and about their total gutted devastation after a terrible accident. It was about their desperate need to swim their lives back upstream, somehow.

I was so committed to this story that I quit my job, as a 22-year-old. A year later, I had a novel written. The twins in my story, Jon and Eden, were taken into the care of their retired grandma, Bobbie. Bobbie lived by herself on a farm at Flowerdale; it had a creek at the back, which the boys could swim up. On what I thought was my final read-through of this fresh-written novel, in 1991, I realised that the storyline was strong but that the character of Bobbie wasn’t, and she had to be. I decided that the book needed to be re-written.

And there, unbelievably, began a 25-year writing journey to get this character of Bobbie right.

I just simply never could, or not right enough. I wasn’t old enough, or wise enough, or good enough.

And so every year, ever since, I’ve worked on this same book, trying to get it right. Just to put this in perspective: I started writing this book ten years before the birth of my first child. He’s now in third year uni.

Amazingly though, the book is now finished. I somehow got it right. The breakthrough came in the simplest and most unremarkable of ways. I was alone one night in a hotel room, my laptop open, moving words around, trying. I typed these words: Life is different on the other side of youth.

As soon as these words appeared I realised two things: that I would never have written these words in 1990.

And that, unlike me, Ron never got to see the other side of youth.

Something about this realisation made me stop. It made me think of all those failed years, all this trying with nothing to really show for it. Failure suddenly felt like the luckiest thing in the world; I mightn’t have made much of it, but at least I’d had a chance.

Of course, over the years, I’d wondered why it mattered so much to me that I get the telling of this story right. Maybe over the years I’d lost sight of the answer to this.

It’s the only story I’ve ever really wanted to write, was my usual answer.

I realised that night in a hotel room that there was another reason.

And that was that I’d wanted, from the start, as no doubt hundreds of real life people had in their own personal ways, to get Ron back to shore, safely, or more precisely: to somehow do something for him.

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WE WERE NOT MEN.