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Juice
Length: 14 hr 12 min
An epic novel of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. This is Tim Winton as you’ve never read him before.
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.
Problem is, they’re not alone.
So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.
An epic novel of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. This is Tim Winton as you’ve never read him before.
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place – middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.
Problem is, they’re not alone.
So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.
15 pages, Audiobook
First published October 1, 2024
1037 people are currently reading
9340 people want to read
About the author
Tim Winton
76 books2,385 followersTim Winton was born in Perth, Western Australia, but moved at a young age to the small country town of Albany.
While a student at Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university". His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, however, that his career and economic future were cemented.
In 1995 Winton’s novel, The Riders, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award three times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992) and Dirt Music (2002). Cloudstreet is arguably his best-known work, regularly appearing in lists of Australia’s best-loved novels. His latest novel, released in 2013, is called Eyrie.
He is now one of Australia's most esteemed novelists, writing for both adults and children. All his books are still in print and have been published in eighteen different languages. His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio. On the publication of his novel, Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster, Lucky Oceans, to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel.
He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece but currently lives in Western Australia with his wife and three children.
While a student at Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university". His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, however, that his career and economic future were cemented.
In 1995 Winton’s novel, The Riders, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award three times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992) and Dirt Music (2002). Cloudstreet is arguably his best-known work, regularly appearing in lists of Australia’s best-loved novels. His latest novel, released in 2013, is called Eyrie.
He is now one of Australia's most esteemed novelists, writing for both adults and children. All his books are still in print and have been published in eighteen different languages. His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio. On the publication of his novel, Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster, Lucky Oceans, to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel.
He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece but currently lives in Western Australia with his wife and three children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 871 reviews
October 4, 2024
Winton’s latest novel is set in a dystopian future that we have created. A planet at the mercy of the sun. It is now too hot to stay above ground during the summer. It is only possible to live north of the Tropic of Cancer and south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Lethal Heat waves can kill a person in days. Clouds of ash can “drown” a person in minutes. The most horrifying point that Winton, a staunch environmentalist, makes is that this future world is more than a possibility, more of an inevitability if we do not take action right now.
The novel opens with the protagonist escaping and on the run with a young girl. Escaping from who we do not know. From his description of the environment, we know that something is very wrong,
“I try to swipe the dust from the films and panels, but it’s pointless. In a minute or so every generating surface will be furred with ash again. I just need the turbines to trickle in enough juice to get us across”.
“Juice”, the title of the book is used to describe many things in this novel. Things that are needed to survive. Petrol, water, batteries, and our own personal energy.
A few days later they find an abandoned mine but are captured by a man armed with a crossbow. The story unfolds with the protagonist telling their captor who he is and his past in an effort to save their lives.
From his narrating we learn of what has happened to the Earth. The ages and epochs of the past. The Dirty World, The Terror, The Hundred years of Light.
Winton broaches the theme of refugees, exile, and xenophobia in the form of Sims. The Sims are androids, “artificial” humans created to be slaves. However, they grow to abhor their existence of servitude and many escape and are trying to live a different life.
Winton also explores the role that mega corporations have on our lives and planet. But to talk too much about this would be a spoiler.
The whole novel takes place in a couple of hours and the suspense that Winton builds as the protagonist nears the end of his story is knife edge. The reader has no idea whether their captor is going to kill them both.
This is the darkest novel Winton has written and it feels like a warning. But not just a warning, it feels as if Winton is frustrated, exasperated, disgusted at us, this generation, not doing enough to ensure that future generations will not slide into this hellish world he has written.
Another Winton classic and one of the best books I have read this year!
The novel opens with the protagonist escaping and on the run with a young girl. Escaping from who we do not know. From his description of the environment, we know that something is very wrong,
“I try to swipe the dust from the films and panels, but it’s pointless. In a minute or so every generating surface will be furred with ash again. I just need the turbines to trickle in enough juice to get us across”.
“Juice”, the title of the book is used to describe many things in this novel. Things that are needed to survive. Petrol, water, batteries, and our own personal energy.
A few days later they find an abandoned mine but are captured by a man armed with a crossbow. The story unfolds with the protagonist telling their captor who he is and his past in an effort to save their lives.
From his narrating we learn of what has happened to the Earth. The ages and epochs of the past. The Dirty World, The Terror, The Hundred years of Light.
Winton broaches the theme of refugees, exile, and xenophobia in the form of Sims. The Sims are androids, “artificial” humans created to be slaves. However, they grow to abhor their existence of servitude and many escape and are trying to live a different life.
Winton also explores the role that mega corporations have on our lives and planet. But to talk too much about this would be a spoiler.
The whole novel takes place in a couple of hours and the suspense that Winton builds as the protagonist nears the end of his story is knife edge. The reader has no idea whether their captor is going to kill them both.
This is the darkest novel Winton has written and it feels like a warning. But not just a warning, it feels as if Winton is frustrated, exasperated, disgusted at us, this generation, not doing enough to ensure that future generations will not slide into this hellish world he has written.
Another Winton classic and one of the best books I have read this year!
October 21, 2024
Tim Winton's new novel Juice has odd commonalities with Robert Graves's Wife to Mr Milton, which I read last week. I found both books unputdownable for similar reasons: they do such a good job of transporting you into the world they describe, and they convey such a strong sense of moral indignation. In Wife to Mr Milton, the indignation is about the plight of women in a patriarchal society. In Juice, it's about the plight of everyone in a capitalist society.
Graves evidently did a huge amount of research concerning Civil War England, and Winton has done just as much on the probable effects of climate change. Two themes stand out. First, he does a fantastic job of conveying what things will be like a few generations from now if we carry on with business as usual. It won't be Mad Max gangs stalking a barren wasteland. People are ingenious and adaptable, and even if conditions are very harsh they find ways to cope. The book is full of minutely detailed descriptions of post-climate-apocalypse life which often reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's just taken for granted that you have to live underground for the summer months, that even if you always wear maximal sunblock you'll get skin cancers, that you spend all of your time trying to get spare parts to keep functional your solar panels, grow sheds and electric vehicles, that you need well-prepared defences against the inevitable cyclones. Things slowly get worse, but as usual people are reluctant to admit it. Life is hard, suck it up.
The second theme which gives the book power is the degree of hatred felt for the organisations and individuals who caused the world to become like this, in particular the large fossil fuel companies. Most of the future-world citizens never think about it; they have no interest in history or politics. But there is a secret network that has not forgotten, and they remorselessly hunt down and kill the descendants of the people who ran Aramco and BP and Shell, and their enablers and helpers. Winton denies it in interviews, which he probably has to, but it seems to me that the message is clear: rather than killing them two hundred years from now, when it's too late to do any good, wouldn't it be better to kill them now? They are the worst kinds of criminals, ruining the planet permanently so that they can enjoy lives of luxury today.
There's another theme I can't go into without dropping major spoilers. Winton apparently spent seven years writing Juice, and my impression is that he decided halfway through that he needed to change the plot to reflect things that had happened meanwhile. I was also a bit unhappy about the Scheherazade-like framing device, and I found the twist near the end rather unnecessary. So structurally I suppose the novel could be stronger, but what the hell, if you finish a five hundred page book in two and a half days then it must have a lot going for it. Check this out if you want a concrete picture of what climate change means in human terms.
Graves evidently did a huge amount of research concerning Civil War England, and Winton has done just as much on the probable effects of climate change. Two themes stand out. First, he does a fantastic job of conveying what things will be like a few generations from now if we carry on with business as usual. It won't be Mad Max gangs stalking a barren wasteland. People are ingenious and adaptable, and even if conditions are very harsh they find ways to cope. The book is full of minutely detailed descriptions of post-climate-apocalypse life which often reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's just taken for granted that you have to live underground for the summer months, that even if you always wear maximal sunblock you'll get skin cancers, that you spend all of your time trying to get spare parts to keep functional your solar panels, grow sheds and electric vehicles, that you need well-prepared defences against the inevitable cyclones. Things slowly get worse, but as usual people are reluctant to admit it. Life is hard, suck it up.
The second theme which gives the book power is the degree of hatred felt for the organisations and individuals who caused the world to become like this, in particular the large fossil fuel companies. Most of the future-world citizens never think about it; they have no interest in history or politics. But there is a secret network that has not forgotten, and they remorselessly hunt down and kill the descendants of the people who ran Aramco and BP and Shell, and their enablers and helpers. Winton denies it in interviews, which he probably has to, but it seems to me that the message is clear: rather than killing them two hundred years from now, when it's too late to do any good, wouldn't it be better to kill them now? They are the worst kinds of criminals, ruining the planet permanently so that they can enjoy lives of luxury today.
There's another theme I can't go into without dropping major spoilers. Winton apparently spent seven years writing Juice, and my impression is that he decided halfway through that he needed to change the plot to reflect things that had happened meanwhile. I was also a bit unhappy about the Scheherazade-like framing device, and I found the twist near the end rather unnecessary. So structurally I suppose the novel could be stronger, but what the hell, if you finish a five hundred page book in two and a half days then it must have a lot going for it. Check this out if you want a concrete picture of what climate change means in human terms.
September 5, 2024
Tim Winton did it to me again. I’m getting near the end of this one and I know it’s going to have another ending where I scream ‘No! What happens next Tim?’ And this is quite a long book too so for me to want more, it must’ve been a good one. Set generations in the future in a climate ravaged world, it opens a bit like The Road, a man and a child alone, travelling and being highly cautious. What follows involves the man (the narrator, not named) telling his life story and it’s quite a compelling read, from about the middle of the way I found it very hard to put down. I still have many questions at the end of it. A great read.
January 11, 2025
4/5
Ok how did I feel about this one...
In Juice, there is an unnamed narrator travelling through a part of northern Australia that has been turned to ash by perpetual fire. He and his young companion are survivors of climate destruction, and the utter breakdown of social cohesion that was the inevitable by-product. The majority of the novel concerns the narrator telling his story to another man they have come across on their journey.
The whole thing is a metaphor and a warning. It's an historical novel about a future that hasn't yet occurred, but that is not beyond the realm of possibility.
The narrator has to convince this pessimistic man that a future for them can only be viable if they work together. If he cannot convince him then there is no future for anyone. The child companion has no agency, her future will be decided by the adult's actions. This is a metaphor for where we are right now. If we fail to ensure a sustainable earth, future generations will have no agency. In many ways this novel is a call for those who are truly worried about, and convinced of, the path we are heading down to get out and convince the nihilists and deniers of our current generation.
The warning is in Winton's prose. The brutality of a life where summer must be endured underground and a 'cold' winter's day is one that is mid 30 degrees celsius is a damning illustration of a bleak future that may only be a few hundred years down the track. There isn't really that much world building. There doesn't need to be. It's just the current world after climate destruction.
I felt sad and a bit scared. It's an engaging read that I really enjoyed as a novel, but if you choose to take it as something more serious than just a novel, then it's not enjoyable for all the right reasons.
Ok how did I feel about this one...
In Juice, there is an unnamed narrator travelling through a part of northern Australia that has been turned to ash by perpetual fire. He and his young companion are survivors of climate destruction, and the utter breakdown of social cohesion that was the inevitable by-product. The majority of the novel concerns the narrator telling his story to another man they have come across on their journey.
The whole thing is a metaphor and a warning. It's an historical novel about a future that hasn't yet occurred, but that is not beyond the realm of possibility.
The narrator has to convince this pessimistic man that a future for them can only be viable if they work together. If he cannot convince him then there is no future for anyone. The child companion has no agency, her future will be decided by the adult's actions. This is a metaphor for where we are right now. If we fail to ensure a sustainable earth, future generations will have no agency. In many ways this novel is a call for those who are truly worried about, and convinced of, the path we are heading down to get out and convince the nihilists and deniers of our current generation.
The warning is in Winton's prose. The brutality of a life where summer must be endured underground and a 'cold' winter's day is one that is mid 30 degrees celsius is a damning illustration of a bleak future that may only be a few hundred years down the track. There isn't really that much world building. There doesn't need to be. It's just the current world after climate destruction.
I felt sad and a bit scared. It's an engaging read that I really enjoyed as a novel, but if you choose to take it as something more serious than just a novel, then it's not enjoyable for all the right reasons.
November 1, 2024
So Tim Winton has essentially written a Mad Max script (but with languid Winton pacing) mixed with The Road (but with Winton floral hokiness).
The framing device really robs the story of any suspense and with little to no pay off. I admire him trying something new but can he please stick to young men discovering themselves on surfboards?
The framing device really robs the story of any suspense and with little to no pay off. I admire him trying something new but can he please stick to young men discovering themselves on surfboards?
November 20, 2024
This is what I imagine would happen if Greta Thunberg wanted to write The Road/Mad Max but somehow with the framing device of 1001 Nights and with the coolness factor dialled wayyy down. Nothing here worked, sorry to say. Negative bonus points for being twice as long as a story like this should be.
Set in Western Australia some decades after global warming caused the collapse of civilisation, a guy and a mute traumatised girl he’s travelling with get captured while trying to find a place to settle down and the entire book is the guy yapping about his life story in a bid to keep their captor from killing them. He grew up completely isolated on a homestead and then joined up with a secret, weirdly high tech spy organisation whose mission is to murder the descendants of the oil executives of the past. Over the course of his life, climate change gets even worse and for some reason humanoid robots pop up too (just… why?). Also, there’s no quotation marks, ye be warned.
It starts off with the setting - apologies to all Australians, but it’s kinda like if the setting for a climate change story set in the future was Las Vegas or the UAE: I mean, some of it is barely liveable even today if you didn’t have aircon and desalination plants and and and, so yeah obviously it stands to reason it would be barely liveable after 100+ years of runaway global warming? Really lessened the shock factor Winton is trying to sell here.
The framing device is also annoying, but that might be a me problem because I generally hate all stories that are written as letters or spoken monologues. It never works. 1) nobody really talks like that and 2) you still miss out on being able to see the protagonist’s inner life or an outside perspective.
I don’t know, I don’t even have that much more to say about this, I just don’t think this was a good book. It wasn’t poignant, it wasn’t suspenseful, the main character wasn’t interesting. Worst of all, the world building was really bad imo. I’m assuming Winton hasn’t written sci-fi before because everything about it was shaky.
It also seemed to reflect the world view of a particular subset of environmentalists for whom individual people who work for fossil fuel companies are the devil and solely responsible for climate change. Sure, they don’t help things. But it’s such a reductive view of what’s a colossal societal and political failing from all of us to prevent our own destruction. Hell, I’m very conscious of the threat of global warming, but you’ll still find me sitting on a plane several times a year and buying vegetables flown in from South Africa wrapped in plastic. So am I not at fault as well? Wouldn’t you think our great-grandkids will hold us all responsible, trading the future of the planet for driving our petrol cars 500 metres to the supermarket? To not even entertain this thought experiment if your main characters are supposed to be future eco vigilantes is weak.
So yeah, in conclusio: really not worth sitting through 500 pages for.
Set in Western Australia some decades after global warming caused the collapse of civilisation, a guy and a mute traumatised girl he’s travelling with get captured while trying to find a place to settle down and the entire book is the guy yapping about his life story in a bid to keep their captor from killing them. He grew up completely isolated on a homestead and then joined up with a secret, weirdly high tech spy organisation whose mission is to murder the descendants of the oil executives of the past. Over the course of his life, climate change gets even worse and for some reason humanoid robots pop up too (just… why?). Also, there’s no quotation marks, ye be warned.
It starts off with the setting - apologies to all Australians, but it’s kinda like if the setting for a climate change story set in the future was Las Vegas or the UAE: I mean, some of it is barely liveable even today if you didn’t have aircon and desalination plants and and and, so yeah obviously it stands to reason it would be barely liveable after 100+ years of runaway global warming? Really lessened the shock factor Winton is trying to sell here.
The framing device is also annoying, but that might be a me problem because I generally hate all stories that are written as letters or spoken monologues. It never works. 1) nobody really talks like that and 2) you still miss out on being able to see the protagonist’s inner life or an outside perspective.
I don’t know, I don’t even have that much more to say about this, I just don’t think this was a good book. It wasn’t poignant, it wasn’t suspenseful, the main character wasn’t interesting. Worst of all, the world building was really bad imo. I’m assuming Winton hasn’t written sci-fi before because everything about it was shaky.
It also seemed to reflect the world view of a particular subset of environmentalists for whom individual people who work for fossil fuel companies are the devil and solely responsible for climate change. Sure, they don’t help things. But it’s such a reductive view of what’s a colossal societal and political failing from all of us to prevent our own destruction. Hell, I’m very conscious of the threat of global warming, but you’ll still find me sitting on a plane several times a year and buying vegetables flown in from South Africa wrapped in plastic. So am I not at fault as well? Wouldn’t you think our great-grandkids will hold us all responsible, trading the future of the planet for driving our petrol cars 500 metres to the supermarket? To not even entertain this thought experiment if your main characters are supposed to be future eco vigilantes is weak.
So yeah, in conclusio: really not worth sitting through 500 pages for.
April 9, 2025
In the middle of 2024 I decided I've read enough nonfiction about climate change. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World provided, if not the last word, then sufficient for now. If something new and hopeful comes along, I may reconsider. For the moment, though, I've absorbed enough explanations of the science, economics, and politics to find weather chat very difficult. (For example, when someone remarks on how warm it is my first thought is invariably, "Yet for young kids this is going to be one of the coldest years of their life." That's too big for small talk.) Plus the crushing despair, of course. Novels on the topic, however, I continue to seek out as long as they're doing something potentially interesting, while being touchy about their genre classification. I was pleased to see that Juice has been assigned 'general fiction' by the library, as climate change novels aren't automatically dystopian. What could be a more universal contemporary experience than the destablisation of the global climate, which only astronauts on the International Space Station can briefly escape?
Juice is set in Australia, a few generations from now. It depicts a future that we are staring in the face, in which global warming has made the equatorial expanse between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn uninhabitable for human beings. After a chaotic climate shift that killed billions, there has been a period of relative stability ('the long peace') that appears to be coming to an end. The majority of the narrative consists of the narrator recounting his life story. He was brought up on an isolated farmstead with his mother, living underground for months during the dangerous heat of summer. As a young adult, he found love and purpose before losing almost everything. As the book opens, he's searching for refuge with a mute young girl he rescued. Although there are hints of Mad Max: Fury Road and The Road in style and imagery, I found the narrative original and thought-provoking. Juice explores the question of whether belated justice is still justice - how late is too late?
Juice is a particularly powerful and original addition to climate change literature. A recent novel that would read particularly well with it is The Future by Naomi Alderman, as both take an interest in billionaire survivalists. I can't help noticing that Australian writers seem to produce particularly hard-hitting climate change novels, from The Sea and Summer in 1987 to The Living Sea of Waking Dreams in 2020.
I've classified Juice as sci-fi for depicting a possible future, after toying with the labels dystopian or apocalyptic. The argument for the latter is stronger, however it seems to fall between the two. There is too much focus on social systems for an apocalyptic novel, yet too much focus on societal breakdown and its aftermath for a dystopia. I think Winton draws upon both sub-genres and combines them unusually adeptly. The title is likewise thoughtfully chosen. In the narrative, juice is fuel for homes and vehicles, in addition to sustenance and morale for people. As the climate returns to instability after a period of relative calm, the narrator asks what keeps people from nihilism and despair, how and why they hold onto hope. An ever-relevant question that is especially apposite in the context of climate change in 2024. I will think about Juice for a long time to come.
Juice is set in Australia, a few generations from now. It depicts a future that we are staring in the face, in which global warming has made the equatorial expanse between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn uninhabitable for human beings. After a chaotic climate shift that killed billions, there has been a period of relative stability ('the long peace') that appears to be coming to an end. The majority of the narrative consists of the narrator recounting his life story. He was brought up on an isolated farmstead with his mother, living underground for months during the dangerous heat of summer. As a young adult, he found love and purpose before losing almost everything. As the book opens, he's searching for refuge with a mute young girl he rescued. Although there are hints of Mad Max: Fury Road and The Road in style and imagery, I found the narrative original and thought-provoking. Juice explores the question of whether belated justice is still justice - how late is too late?
Juice is a particularly powerful and original addition to climate change literature. A recent novel that would read particularly well with it is The Future by Naomi Alderman, as both take an interest in billionaire survivalists. I can't help noticing that Australian writers seem to produce particularly hard-hitting climate change novels, from The Sea and Summer in 1987 to The Living Sea of Waking Dreams in 2020.
I've classified Juice as sci-fi for depicting a possible future, after toying with the labels dystopian or apocalyptic. The argument for the latter is stronger, however it seems to fall between the two. There is too much focus on social systems for an apocalyptic novel, yet too much focus on societal breakdown and its aftermath for a dystopia. I think Winton draws upon both sub-genres and combines them unusually adeptly. The title is likewise thoughtfully chosen. In the narrative, juice is fuel for homes and vehicles, in addition to sustenance and morale for people. As the climate returns to instability after a period of relative calm, the narrator asks what keeps people from nihilism and despair, how and why they hold onto hope. An ever-relevant question that is especially apposite in the context of climate change in 2024. I will think about Juice for a long time to come.
Want to read
February 10, 2024From the publisher: ‘Juice is an epic journey, a wild ride through a nightmare of our own making. This is Tim Winton as you’ve never read him before.’
January 19, 2025
A new Tim Winton novel is a cause for celebration for me, I have long considered him the master of, as I call it "The Great Western Australian novel". The Shepherd's Hut , Cloudstreet , Breath have left indelible marks on my reading landscape.
Juice finds us once again in Western Australia but no one is surfing. A climate apocalypse forces people to live underground for half the year doing their best to avoid heat sickness. In the Winter months it is still possible to eek out a hard-scrabble living amongst the dust and Spinifex grass. You could be forgiven for thinking you were reading a walkthrough of Stardew Valley - the apocalypse farming edition - plant the corn, pick the tomatoes, go to market, find the missing pump part, look out ! a hail storm has taken out the solar array...
Its obvious that this is Winton's big environmental novel, his chance to indulge in some fantasy fiction of eliminating everyone involved in bringing the world to its knees. I am not in disagreement with his stance on this, in fact, he writes a thoughtful article on his position in the Sept 2024 Guardian.
However, judging Juice as a work of apocalyptic fiction alongside such greats as Cormac McCarthy's The Road then this is a middling attempt. Bogged down by mysterious military side quests and the inexplicable appearance of "Sims" late in the story - ultimately the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
Read this instead :-
https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
Juice finds us once again in Western Australia but no one is surfing. A climate apocalypse forces people to live underground for half the year doing their best to avoid heat sickness. In the Winter months it is still possible to eek out a hard-scrabble living amongst the dust and Spinifex grass. You could be forgiven for thinking you were reading a walkthrough of Stardew Valley - the apocalypse farming edition - plant the corn, pick the tomatoes, go to market, find the missing pump part, look out ! a hail storm has taken out the solar array...
Its obvious that this is Winton's big environmental novel, his chance to indulge in some fantasy fiction of eliminating everyone involved in bringing the world to its knees. I am not in disagreement with his stance on this, in fact, he writes a thoughtful article on his position in the Sept 2024 Guardian.
However, judging Juice as a work of apocalyptic fiction alongside such greats as Cormac McCarthy's The Road then this is a middling attempt. Bogged down by mysterious military side quests and the inexplicable appearance of "Sims" late in the story - ultimately the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
Read this instead :-
https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
February 1, 2025
Three stars for the horrific setting and world-building (which are all too imaginable and distressing) and less for the overall length, prose style and monosyllabic dialogue.
But full kudos to Winton for alerting readers to what’s coming despite there being few surprises for his fellow West Australians, where mining and money rule and whose huge environmental footprint continues to rise.
But full kudos to Winton for alerting readers to what’s coming despite there being few surprises for his fellow West Australians, where mining and money rule and whose huge environmental footprint continues to rise.
Want to read
March 15, 2025Sometimes you just have to step back until another time. I'm pausing/stopping at about 15% as it is just too grim right now for me to read. It's not so much the environmental catastrophe that is going on in this dystopian novel in Australia's future, but the terrible ways people treat each other. Too close to the bone with our current situation for me to read and keep my mental health.
Well written by one of my favourite authors, but I also paused The Shepherd's Hut and went on to finish it later. Library ebook about to be returned, so hopefully I will be able to revisit at a future date.
'The great mystery of people lies in the many ways in which they’ll deceive themselves.' pg 35
Well written by one of my favourite authors, but I also paused The Shepherd's Hut and went on to finish it later. Library ebook about to be returned, so hopefully I will be able to revisit at a future date.
'The great mystery of people lies in the many ways in which they’ll deceive themselves.' pg 35
god-knows-i-tried
October 28, 2024No!
October 9, 2024
After waiting patiently six years for Tim Winton's latest novel, I greedily devoured all 513 pages in as many days. And now I'm absolutely wrecked.....
I'm writing this, heartbroken, shatterred, on a cross-continent flight having just finished the book. This story is so different from what Tim normally writes, which is often a mirror to our ordinary lives... yet it's the story he's been building to for years.
Rather than being a mirror to our banal suburban ways, it's a plausible distopian warning of our future predicament. It foreshadows how we destroy our planet then canabilise ourselves. Which sounds very Mad Max if not for the way Tim developed his main character (whose name we never know!) in typical empathetic Winton style. Could not put this down. Thanks, Tim for this important novel.
I'm writing this, heartbroken, shatterred, on a cross-continent flight having just finished the book. This story is so different from what Tim normally writes, which is often a mirror to our ordinary lives... yet it's the story he's been building to for years.
Rather than being a mirror to our banal suburban ways, it's a plausible distopian warning of our future predicament. It foreshadows how we destroy our planet then canabilise ourselves. Which sounds very Mad Max if not for the way Tim developed his main character (whose name we never know!) in typical empathetic Winton style. Could not put this down. Thanks, Tim for this important novel.
October 6, 2024
DNF @ 45%
I was soooo bored
I can tell you it’s dystopian, which I normally like.
The word comrade was used a lot.
I was soooo bored
I can tell you it’s dystopian, which I normally like.
The word comrade was used a lot.
February 20, 2025
I can't believe I didn't finish this. I tried a few times to start it but I just wasn't interested. I found it a bit preachy and unconvincing somehow. I didn't like the way the back story was introduced and found it rather clunky. Maybe it was just the wrong time for me because I love dystopian fiction.... It's been compared to 'The Road' which is one of my favourite novels but the prose is completely different in that novel - much sparer.
September 28, 2024
One of the great literary genre novels. THE ROAD meets MAD MAX in all of the best ways, anchored by a deep and full sentiment and a justified rage by what the world-killers whose greed and cruelty have done, will do, to us all.
October 11, 2024
4.5 rounded up.
January 16, 2025
Dystopian desert story that goes on and on and on. Reads like a recount of a life (which it is) but extremely repetitive. Disappointing
October 17, 2024
I had quite the experience reading this book. While it’s based in a dystopian, post apocalyptic version of WA, it was still very similar to the WA I’m currently road tripping through. I could recognise a lot of the scenery he mentioned.
The concept was super interesting and clever, but the plot just not gripping enough. The last 20% of the book should’ve been the entire book! Instead the author spent far too long on the main character’s back story. Still enjoyable
The concept was super interesting and clever, but the plot just not gripping enough. The last 20% of the book should’ve been the entire book! Instead the author spent far too long on the main character’s back story. Still enjoyable
October 26, 2024
‘Juice’ shows us a rather dark, scary and pessimistic future. I certainly hope it never gets to that, but hey , if we continue living the way we do with the governments we’ve chosen, then I’m afraid it will end up this dystopian.
I didn’t like the ending and I would have liked it all to have been a bit shorter, but it’s still one hell of an impressive book. A well deserved 4 stars.
Thank you Picador for the ARC
I didn’t like the ending and I would have liked it all to have been a bit shorter, but it’s still one hell of an impressive book. A well deserved 4 stars.
Thank you Picador for the ARC
October 16, 2024
this whole book feels like the most desperate eulogy. equal parts accusation and apology. moves past anger to that horrible feeling of just a heavy sadness. i didn’t think it was going to be quite as good as it was. a terrible journey that i’m glad to have been on
November 14, 2024
This is an awful, dreary mishmash of Homer's Odyssey, Sheherazade and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". The language is pretty good, and Winton is clearly interested in it, and only it, deploying a hundred 'Mad Max'-esque descriptions of dust and disease. For a book about the power of storytelling, however, the story is basically non-existent. If I had captured his protagonist I would have killed them, or let them go, just to get them to shut up from their endless drivel.
October 29, 2024
I wanted to like this. I really did. Australian. Dystopian.
But it was just so dry. Ironically. DNF at 40%.
But it was just so dry. Ironically. DNF at 40%.
November 16, 2025
Juice is the eleventh novel by award-winning Australian author, Tim Winton. In a far-future Australia, a long time after a climate apocalypse, a man drives his well-equipped vehicle through a burnt-out plain, looking for a place where he and the young girl with him might safely settle.
Having already dismissed a gated compound that turns out to have armed guards patrolling forced labourers, they happen upon an apparently abandoned mine site. In a climate that requires living underground for the summer months, a mine shaft is a feasible proposition. Except that someone has already claimed it. The man suggests they can consolidate, work together, but the fellow wields a crossbow that the man recognises, and ushers them down and into a wire enclosure, where he locks them in.
The man begins talking, ostensibly to establish his bona fides and justify his proposal, but perhaps also, a la 1001 Arabian Nights, to distract the bowman from using his weapon. And so, in between pleading for water and food for the child, he spends the next 500+ pages telling the bowman his life story.
So there’s the life he leads with his mother as a grower, the expansion to salvage work, then his recruitment at almost seventeen, into the Service, a widespread secret organisation perhaps not unlike MI5, except non-government, a network of trained operators who team up for interdictions, acquittals of objects who are on The List: read assassinations.
His story refers to The Dirty World, The Terror, The Hundred Years of Light, The Long Peace. He works with comrades who are known only for their role, or perhaps some feature: silver hair, Spanish. Keeping it all secret and separate, he has to juggle duty and family, especially once he falls in love and fathers a child. He describes the interdictions, convinced that the bowman was once also an operator in the Service.
It’s a little unwieldy, when Winton, rather than naming them, refers to his characters only as “the child”, “my mother”, “the filmlayer”, “the bowman”; he gives just three characters a proper name. He seamlessly weaves in the current state of that future world and what is required to survive the harsh climate, and his descriptive prose skilfully evokes the setting. As usual, he eschews the use of quote marks for speech, which can be confusing and irritating. Probably longer than it needs to be, but a well-told tale.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin Random House Australia.
Having already dismissed a gated compound that turns out to have armed guards patrolling forced labourers, they happen upon an apparently abandoned mine site. In a climate that requires living underground for the summer months, a mine shaft is a feasible proposition. Except that someone has already claimed it. The man suggests they can consolidate, work together, but the fellow wields a crossbow that the man recognises, and ushers them down and into a wire enclosure, where he locks them in.
The man begins talking, ostensibly to establish his bona fides and justify his proposal, but perhaps also, a la 1001 Arabian Nights, to distract the bowman from using his weapon. And so, in between pleading for water and food for the child, he spends the next 500+ pages telling the bowman his life story.
So there’s the life he leads with his mother as a grower, the expansion to salvage work, then his recruitment at almost seventeen, into the Service, a widespread secret organisation perhaps not unlike MI5, except non-government, a network of trained operators who team up for interdictions, acquittals of objects who are on The List: read assassinations.
His story refers to The Dirty World, The Terror, The Hundred Years of Light, The Long Peace. He works with comrades who are known only for their role, or perhaps some feature: silver hair, Spanish. Keeping it all secret and separate, he has to juggle duty and family, especially once he falls in love and fathers a child. He describes the interdictions, convinced that the bowman was once also an operator in the Service.
It’s a little unwieldy, when Winton, rather than naming them, refers to his characters only as “the child”, “my mother”, “the filmlayer”, “the bowman”; he gives just three characters a proper name. He seamlessly weaves in the current state of that future world and what is required to survive the harsh climate, and his descriptive prose skilfully evokes the setting. As usual, he eschews the use of quote marks for speech, which can be confusing and irritating. Probably longer than it needs to be, but a well-told tale.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin Random House Australia.
December 7, 2024
Preamble
Juice is a dystopian novel set in a future world ravaged by climate change. The time period is never identified but one must assume at least 100 years into the future:
I came to this novel with two relevant experiences. In 1988 I constructed a science study unit on weather and climate. It was while researching and resourcing this unit that I first discovered the concept of ‘the greenhouse effect’, global warming and climate change were not in use at that time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed that year. I remember obtaining a blanket from the sick bay and wrapping it around the class globe to illustrate, how CO2 contributed to the maintenance of Earth’s temperatures, and to increase CO2 there would be a subsequent increase in world temperatures.
I live in northern Thailand and during the hot season earlier this year (2024) the whole of SE Asia was covered in what was referred to as a heat dome. Long time expats and locals commented that the heat was extreme and not normal. One evening there was a power failure and the water pumps, and the air-conditioning, would not work. We tried to sleep but the 35-degree heat at midnight made sleep impossible so we headed into town and stayed in an air-conditioned hotel. The people in Juice spend several months a year living underground because of the heat, they don’t have air conditioning.
Finally, I recently read HG Wells’ The Time Traveller the similarities of the two novels is noticeable.
At 500 pages Juice is an epic read. A man is travelling across the vast waste land of Western Australia, he has a young girl with him, he is captured by a man armed with a bow and arrow. The novel consists of the traveller telling the ‘Bow man’ his life story and it is not a pretty story.
So, the novel is the narrator telling, in first person, how he grew from being a young man living a frugal life in northern Western Australia to becoming a crusader for the ‘Service’ where he travels the world seeking revenge against those who contributed to the climatic changes that have ruined the world.
The ’juice’ in the title is a colloquial expression for the energy produced by the oil companies. Interestingly Winton names real oil companies. He doesn’t mention coal or the companies responsible for its mining. ‘Juice” is also what drives his motivation to seek violent revenge.
The story is of epic proportions, it reminded me of The Iliad/The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf and even Harry Potter. The hero on a journey surmounting unassailable odds.
I am not normally a reader of dystopian novels, even more so after having to sit through endless showings of the film The Hunger Games with Year 10 classes! However, I was attracted to Juice because of Winton’s impressive story telling skills. The setting, the events and the characters are all given the Winton touch therefore it is a story that engaged me.
I am interested as to what Winton’s legion of followers, especially women, think of this, at times, extremely violent story.
One of the characteristics of Winton’s novels has been his use of the Australian vernacular. In this novel there is not so much of this language type, but Winton uses the term ‘duds’ (clothes) at the beginning and end of the book, a word I hadn’t heard for some time.
I am a literary acolyte of Winton. I have read all his books, and this one will fit comfortably on that extended shelf with my other Winton texts.
Juice is a dystopian novel set in a future world ravaged by climate change. The time period is never identified but one must assume at least 100 years into the future:
I came to this novel with two relevant experiences. In 1988 I constructed a science study unit on weather and climate. It was while researching and resourcing this unit that I first discovered the concept of ‘the greenhouse effect’, global warming and climate change were not in use at that time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed that year. I remember obtaining a blanket from the sick bay and wrapping it around the class globe to illustrate, how CO2 contributed to the maintenance of Earth’s temperatures, and to increase CO2 there would be a subsequent increase in world temperatures.
I live in northern Thailand and during the hot season earlier this year (2024) the whole of SE Asia was covered in what was referred to as a heat dome. Long time expats and locals commented that the heat was extreme and not normal. One evening there was a power failure and the water pumps, and the air-conditioning, would not work. We tried to sleep but the 35-degree heat at midnight made sleep impossible so we headed into town and stayed in an air-conditioned hotel. The people in Juice spend several months a year living underground because of the heat, they don’t have air conditioning.
Finally, I recently read HG Wells’ The Time Traveller the similarities of the two novels is noticeable.
At 500 pages Juice is an epic read. A man is travelling across the vast waste land of Western Australia, he has a young girl with him, he is captured by a man armed with a bow and arrow. The novel consists of the traveller telling the ‘Bow man’ his life story and it is not a pretty story.
So, the novel is the narrator telling, in first person, how he grew from being a young man living a frugal life in northern Western Australia to becoming a crusader for the ‘Service’ where he travels the world seeking revenge against those who contributed to the climatic changes that have ruined the world.
The ’juice’ in the title is a colloquial expression for the energy produced by the oil companies. Interestingly Winton names real oil companies. He doesn’t mention coal or the companies responsible for its mining. ‘Juice” is also what drives his motivation to seek violent revenge.
The story is of epic proportions, it reminded me of The Iliad/The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf and even Harry Potter. The hero on a journey surmounting unassailable odds.
I am not normally a reader of dystopian novels, even more so after having to sit through endless showings of the film The Hunger Games with Year 10 classes! However, I was attracted to Juice because of Winton’s impressive story telling skills. The setting, the events and the characters are all given the Winton touch therefore it is a story that engaged me.
I am interested as to what Winton’s legion of followers, especially women, think of this, at times, extremely violent story.
One of the characteristics of Winton’s novels has been his use of the Australian vernacular. In this novel there is not so much of this language type, but Winton uses the term ‘duds’ (clothes) at the beginning and end of the book, a word I hadn’t heard for some time.
I am a literary acolyte of Winton. I have read all his books, and this one will fit comfortably on that extended shelf with my other Winton texts.
April 15, 2025
4.5 stars
This was a slow read for me. After a propulsive opening set in a hostile, unforgiving landscape, the unnamed protagonist must Scheherazade his way to survival. In spinning a life-spanning yarn, he hopes to find commonality with the man who holds him and his ward captive. It's apt that in JUICE so much of humanity's history is retained in 'the sagas' because the story the protag tells can be a slog unto itself. As someone who doesn't enjoy multigenerational family biography kinds of stories, this was an arduous read at points. Winton takes his time setting the scene and you can really feel the passage of time when the plot seems to circle and go nowhere while we wait for the protag to age.
That being said, I loved the final third. It gave me everything that I was hoping for from this book when I first heard about it. I even had to begrudgingly admit that all that interminable buildup was necessary in setting the scene. (Well, most of it anyway.) It's definitely on the literary side of speculative fiction, as much a commentary on today as it is a bleak look into our future. There's lots to pick apart if you have an ambitious book club that wants to tackle a long read. I particularly loved the way human history has been retained and passed on in this world. It's a topic I keep turning over in my mind and I keep finding new things Winton did with it that fascinate me.
This was a slow read for me. After a propulsive opening set in a hostile, unforgiving landscape, the unnamed protagonist must Scheherazade his way to survival. In spinning a life-spanning yarn, he hopes to find commonality with the man who holds him and his ward captive. It's apt that in JUICE so much of humanity's history is retained in 'the sagas' because the story the protag tells can be a slog unto itself. As someone who doesn't enjoy multigenerational family biography kinds of stories, this was an arduous read at points. Winton takes his time setting the scene and you can really feel the passage of time when the plot seems to circle and go nowhere while we wait for the protag to age.
That being said, I loved the final third. It gave me everything that I was hoping for from this book when I first heard about it. I even had to begrudgingly admit that all that interminable buildup was necessary in setting the scene. (Well, most of it anyway.) It's definitely on the literary side of speculative fiction, as much a commentary on today as it is a bleak look into our future. There's lots to pick apart if you have an ambitious book club that wants to tackle a long read. I particularly loved the way human history has been retained and passed on in this world. It's a topic I keep turning over in my mind and I keep finding new things Winton did with it that fascinate me.
October 3, 2024
For the first 100 pages, I really didn’t enjoy this at all. Having waited six years for this book, it lacked all that I loved about Tim Winton’s writing; the lyrical, beautiful description of landscape. I found the narration somewhat jarring and too deliberate. I honestly didn’t think i’d finish it. I’m glad I persisted because this really got me. It is a big story, at times moralistic and didactic. For Winton regulars, the expected landscape contrasted with the description of this Dystopian future world is frightening. Persist, you really have to settle into what is a different voice and landscape for Winton, but this was thoroughly engaging. The end bound the whole epic tale together beautifully.
October 23, 2024
My two stars are for the audiobook, listening to which was a giant mistake. I didn’t enjoy the narration at all, particularly as there were so many words that were mispronounced. Tonight I went to see Tim talk, and hearing him discuss his meaning and process made me want to turn back to the novel again. I’m hoping to add a few stars.
January 17, 2025
Life is too short to read this book. Actual plot points that could have made this fascinating were entirely neglected. Instead, it was slow, repetitive, and frankly boring. Each time I sat down to read this it felt like a punishment and when the book finally ended I was left wondering why I bothered. I wish I gave up earlier and just left it as a DNF…
September 23, 2024
great descriptions of the natural landscape but hard not to find the steampunk dystopian world building a little cringe and hackneyed
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