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The Shepherd's Hut
From Tim Winton, Australia’s most decorated and beloved novelist and the author of Cloudstreet, comes The Shepherd’s Hut, the story of a young man on a thrilling journey of self-discovery in one of the most harshest, near-uninhabitable climates on Earth.
Tim Winton is Australia’s most decorated and beloved novelist. Short-listed twice for the Booker Prize and the winner of a record four Miles Franklin Literary Awards for Best Australian Novel, he has a gift for language virtually unrivaled among writers in English. His work is both tough and tender, primordial and new—always revealing the raw, instinctual drives that lure us together and rend us apart.
In The Shepherd’s Hut, Winton crafts the story of Jaxie Clackton, a brutalized rural youth who flees from the scene of his father’s violent death and strikes out for the vast wilds of Western Australia. All he carries with him is a rifle and a waterjug. All he wants is peace and freedom. But surviving in the harsh saltlands alone is a savage business. And once he discovers he’s not alone out there, all Jaxie’s plans go awry. He meets a fellow exile, the ruined priest Fintan MacGillis, a man he’s never certain he can trust, but on whom his life will soon depend. The Shepherd’s Hut is a thrilling tale of unlikely friendship and yearning, at once brutal and lyrical, from one of our finest storytellers.
268 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 8, 2018
732 people are currently reading
7883 people want to read
About the author
Tim Winton
76 books2,370 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 1,302 reviews
December 28, 2025
This novel, set in Australia, attracted my attention because so many of my GR friends read and liked it. It has a high rating of 4.1 with almost a thousand reviews.
Jaxie, barely a teenager, is brutalized and terrorized by his butcher father. We learn through flashbacks that his mother was brutalized too and she is dead of cancer. Now his father has died, accidentally, but Jaxie figures he’ll be blamed for it because everyone knows he hates his father. So he takes off across the “wild west” of western Australia with just a rifle and jug of water. He is vaguely heading toward a girl he is in love with in a distant town but feels he has to hide out for a while.
He meets up with a solitary priest who is hiding out in isolation in the outback for some reason. The story becomes the relationship that develops between the two and whether or not they can trust each other. Surviving on wild goats, as they talk about life, philosophy and God, even after weeks of companionship, they are still keeping an eye on where their guns and knives are. They also discover they are not as isolated as they thought.
Jaxie gives the novel a distinctive voice, and in that it reminds me of two other novels with distinctive English voices: Milkman by Anna Burns set in Northern Ireland, and Swing Hammer Swing by Jeff Torrington set in Scotland. Here’s an example from Shepher's Hut:
“I ran for a bit. Right into the setting sun. But the salt surface was iffy and I had no puff in me. So I settled for walking hard as I could for the shepherd’s hut and all me stuff. He kept calling and yelling behind me but I wasn’t having any of it. I couldn’t [f’ing] believe I’d walked into this setup like a retard. I was that angry with meself I could off bitten off me own face in the mirror.”
There’s a lot of original writing and metaphors:
“Which isn’t so hard in wheat country, out there houses are as rare as rocking-horse turds.”
“Everything you saw and touched out there looked like tetanus waiting to bite your arse.”
“Some days you hoof along with memories and you’ve been so took up with thinking you can’t hardly believe how far you come, like you arrive just after you started.”
“He had skinny legs with ropey blue veins winding up them and his top teeth were plastic and moved enough to make you seasick.”
“Us Clacktons never done our thinking out loud. Or our talking neither really.”
“Fintan was a sneaky old prick, he was twice as smart as he looked and about half as clever as he thought he was.”
The book could use a glossary for Americans (other English users too?). Even ignoring the dozens of names I never heard of for plants, animals and insects, and words I feel pretty confident of in context, there are a lot I don't get: durries, azzies, mulga, pannikins (cups?), wandoos, ranga, mozzies (mosquitoes?), getting crook, dunny, jaffles (waffles?), jarrah noggins (bookcases?). Maybe a translated edition? LOL. Australians would probably say the same of American books.
Really a good story and a distinctive read.
The author was born in 1960 in Perth, western Australia. He has a couple of dozen novels, two of which were short-listed for the Booker Prize. He set a record by winning Australia’s novel of the year award (Miles Franklin) four times. His best-known books are Cloudstreet, Breath and Dirt Music. I also enjoyed Breath by Tim Winton with a link to my review below:
Breath
Top photo of western Australia from blog.hif.com.au
Abandoned house in western Australia from google.ca on pinterest
The author from penguin.com.au
May 22, 2018
Even though it was years ago, I remember when I first discovered Tim Winton . I would frequently spend part of a Sunday afternoon at my favorite bookstore which sadly is no longer in existence. I would browse the shelves not looking for anything in particular and I picked up Cloudstreet because I was attracted to the title. I bought it, read it and loved it . After that I read Dirt Music and Breath. I was drawn to read this because of my enjoyment of those novels. If you haven’t read Winton, I would recommend starting with one of his earlier works. If you are a Winton fan, I definitely recommend it.
This is the raw and rough to read story of Jaxie Clackton, a teenage boy on the run through the brutal and wild outback, not for anything he’s done but for what’s been done to him. He’s on the run from his miserable young life of physical abuse and feeling like the outcast. The first part of the book, a profile in loneliness is rather sad as Jaxie recounts his past. He’s a pitiful soul, in spite of the rough talk and vulgarity . He has no family or friends , only the fear of being caught for something he didn’t do and the hope that he could get to the girl he loves, his cousin. He’s tough but vulnerable when he crosses paths with Fintan MacGillis, an ex priest, living a secluded life in the wild. It’s this unlikely friendship that impacts Jaxie on his way forward.
I have to admit that I didn’t quite get all of the slang and had to google a few words if I couldn’t guess the meaning. Some of the more profane were easy to guess. If you are sensitive to this, it may not be for you. Another warning - there is killing of animals for food but there is one scene of animal cruelty that was hard to read. In spite of these reservations, I thought it was a moving story of a boy’s journey to manhood.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Farrah, Straus and Giroux through NetGalley.
January 21, 2022
The Shepherd’s Hut is a story of an angry adolescent… He believes the world is against him so he takes a stand against the world…
Now he is a motherless boy… And as soon as a monster of his father dies in an accident he’s off to the wilderness… And there in a lonely, forsaken place he meets an old man – an outcast and a leper…
The old man has already left everything behind… For the boy everything still lies ahead…
When one goes down the road of adolescence, which way will it turn? Will one become kinder? Will one become wicked?
So I buzzed my head too. Then I totally shaved it. And Christ, Mum really did her nana. Then she bawled her eyes out. Wankbag knocked me down the front steps and said I was a fucking disgrace, didn’t I have any fucking feelings for my mother. It was only then I remembered. Mum was wearing a wig most of last year. I guess it give them both a fright seeing me with a bald head. But I wasn’t thinking about any of that when I done it. I didn’t do it to be a smartarse. She stood and watched him flog me right in the street. After that I didn’t give a shit what either of them thought.
Now he is a motherless boy… And as soon as a monster of his father dies in an accident he’s off to the wilderness… And there in a lonely, forsaken place he meets an old man – an outcast and a leper…
He was Irish, he told me that straight up. But I never found out what it was he done to get himself put there by the lake, what kind of person he was before. Not really. He let things slip, but he never give me the whole beginning and middle. Like he said, I showed up at the end and that was plenty enough for both of us. It’s only now I get what he meant. He was one of them geezers been out on his own so long he talks to himself all day, tells himself what he’s about to do, what he should do, what he’s forgotten to get done.
The old man has already left everything behind… For the boy everything still lies ahead…
…a man should have learnt that nothing is certain. This is what I tell myself, of course, but it’s an effort to discipline the mind. A fella can’t help pining for a bit of solid ground. So I take quare comfort when the sun pops up there across the lake every morning and the roof is on and there’s a goat in the yard. I tell myself, here it is, another today – surely this is enough. But the feeling, sad to say, it doesn’t last. You see, even a man with no future gets himself into conniptions of… of anticipation. What next? When will it be? Will they come? Is that all? What will happen?
When one goes down the road of adolescence, which way will it turn? Will one become kinder? Will one become wicked?
November 24, 2020
The Shepherd’s Hut, like much of Tim Winton’s work, sees a mix of fine writing and compulsive story telling.
We are dragged roughly through this novel by Jaxie Clackton, a troubled, delinquent teenager. His raw, unjoined up thoughts bombard us continually, all presented in rough Aussie vernacular and slang.
Jaxie’s mother has passed away and he lives and works with his alcoholic, abusive father.
Following a nightmarish incident, Jaxie runs away. His hope is to go off grid and travel hundreds of miles to distant family and the girl he loves.
His bruising journey through the searing heat and bone dry landscape of Western Australia takes him to an isolated shepherd’s hut where a chance encounter will shape his life.
Jaxie is a character fully formed .......... he’s headstrong, resourceful and shows moments of tenderness. He’s also damaged, vulnerable and furious at the world - often experiencing the hot angry shame of not being able to fully express himself.
The atmosphere, brutal landscape and intense inner narratives, make this read a real experience, and the closing pages of the novel are almost unbearably gripping.
The Shepherd’s Hut is a fierce, visionary and beautiful novel ........ very much recommended (4.5 stars)
We are dragged roughly through this novel by Jaxie Clackton, a troubled, delinquent teenager. His raw, unjoined up thoughts bombard us continually, all presented in rough Aussie vernacular and slang.
Jaxie’s mother has passed away and he lives and works with his alcoholic, abusive father.
Following a nightmarish incident, Jaxie runs away. His hope is to go off grid and travel hundreds of miles to distant family and the girl he loves.
His bruising journey through the searing heat and bone dry landscape of Western Australia takes him to an isolated shepherd’s hut where a chance encounter will shape his life.
Jaxie is a character fully formed .......... he’s headstrong, resourceful and shows moments of tenderness. He’s also damaged, vulnerable and furious at the world - often experiencing the hot angry shame of not being able to fully express himself.
The atmosphere, brutal landscape and intense inner narratives, make this read a real experience, and the closing pages of the novel are almost unbearably gripping.
The Shepherd’s Hut is a fierce, visionary and beautiful novel ........ very much recommended (4.5 stars)
August 17, 2018
Oh, YES! All the stars! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
I LOVED this gritty, raw and deeply atmospheric tale about a cruelly abused Australian teen boy, Jaxie, who sets out across the harsh Australian wildlands to escape a mess of a situation at home. In his journey across the brutal and unforgiving landscape of West Australia, Jaxie encounters Fintan MacGillis, an elderly Irish priest living in exile in a tin shack by a large salt lake. They develop a tentative, prickly relationship which leads to a level of mutual respect and trust - which is tough for Jaxie, who has no frame of reference for adult men who are anything but brutal and self-serving. Their story culminates in a intense and haunting ending that transforms Jaxie forever.
This is one hell of a coming of age story. Jaxie’s narrative is blunt and profane and is peppered with the vernacular and slang of rural Australia. There’s a cadence to it and you get used to it as the story moves along. I wasn’t offended by the profanity; that’s all Jaxie knows and how he was raised by his father. In interviews with the author, Tim Winton acknowledges that Jaxie can be a tough character to stick with, but I loved him from the start. In addition to the profanity, there is one scene of cruelty to animals as well a lot of hunting and skinning scenes, so if you are very sensitive to this, be aware.
I have never read Tim Winton before, but I dearly loved this and can’t wait to read him again. As my GR friend Bianca told me, be sure to read the interviews with Tim Winton about this book (but after you finish). Tim’s comments helped me fully understand what he hoped to accomplish with this book and gave me additional insight into what happens at the end.
If you like Southern grit or Appalachian noir, this is similar but with a vivid and harsh Australian setting. Highly, highly recommend. This is a book I am going to buy for my personal library to read again.
I LOVED this gritty, raw and deeply atmospheric tale about a cruelly abused Australian teen boy, Jaxie, who sets out across the harsh Australian wildlands to escape a mess of a situation at home. In his journey across the brutal and unforgiving landscape of West Australia, Jaxie encounters Fintan MacGillis, an elderly Irish priest living in exile in a tin shack by a large salt lake. They develop a tentative, prickly relationship which leads to a level of mutual respect and trust - which is tough for Jaxie, who has no frame of reference for adult men who are anything but brutal and self-serving. Their story culminates in a intense and haunting ending that transforms Jaxie forever.
This is one hell of a coming of age story. Jaxie’s narrative is blunt and profane and is peppered with the vernacular and slang of rural Australia. There’s a cadence to it and you get used to it as the story moves along. I wasn’t offended by the profanity; that’s all Jaxie knows and how he was raised by his father. In interviews with the author, Tim Winton acknowledges that Jaxie can be a tough character to stick with, but I loved him from the start. In addition to the profanity, there is one scene of cruelty to animals as well a lot of hunting and skinning scenes, so if you are very sensitive to this, be aware.
I have never read Tim Winton before, but I dearly loved this and can’t wait to read him again. As my GR friend Bianca told me, be sure to read the interviews with Tim Winton about this book (but after you finish). Tim’s comments helped me fully understand what he hoped to accomplish with this book and gave me additional insight into what happens at the end.
If you like Southern grit or Appalachian noir, this is similar but with a vivid and harsh Australian setting. Highly, highly recommend. This is a book I am going to buy for my personal library to read again.
May 10, 2018
Jackson "Jaxie" Clackton, 16 years old, was continually abused by his dad, Sid Clackton. Clackton, master butcher in the town of Monkton, used Jaxie as a punching bag. Jaxie was a bad tempered school delinquent nicknamed "Jaxie Horsemeat" by his peers. In turn, he enjoyed punching students for ill-treating him. Jaxie was currently nursing a black eye given to him during one of Clackton's drunken rages. Wishing and hoping his dad would die, imagine his shock finding his father crushed under a car, Apparently, the vehicle slipped off a high-lift jack in the shed. Fear of being blamed for his father's death caused Jaxie to quickly leave home. He headed north for Magnet, approximately 300 kilometers from Monkton. His meager supplies included an Igloo jug, a rifle with ammo, four oranges and a pair of binoculars.
Jaxie knew how to hunt and butcher, however, all he had with him for butchering was a butter knife. His trip plan was as follows: keep his "sh**" together, rest, find water, and get to Magnet to see girlfriend Lee, the one person he felt connected to. Soon, his Igloo jug was pretty near empty, his bad eye throbbed and his rifle was getting mighty heavy. His trek across the vast Australian Outback was brutal and unforgiving. He must replenish his water supply, and soon. Finally, he happened upon the hut of Fintan MacGinnis, a singing, loquacious Irishman who claimed that his abode, in the middle of nowhere, was his refuge as well as exile. Fintan, a mysterious solitary man encouraged Jaxie to stay for a while.
Two souls, one starting life's journey while the other's journey winding down, are both damaged individuals. Was any human connection possible? The harshness and brutalities of life were ever present in this novel, be they the unforgiving land or the cruelty of one's fellow man. The colorful, vernacular language definitely gave "The Shepherd's Hut" a gritty, hardscrabble feel. As a reader unfamiliar with the writing of Tim Winton, I was unaware that he is one of Australia's most acclaimed authors. "The Shepherd's Hut" was an awesome and excellent introduction to Winton's literary gems! I highly recommend this book!
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Shepherd's Hut".
Jaxie knew how to hunt and butcher, however, all he had with him for butchering was a butter knife. His trip plan was as follows: keep his "sh**" together, rest, find water, and get to Magnet to see girlfriend Lee, the one person he felt connected to. Soon, his Igloo jug was pretty near empty, his bad eye throbbed and his rifle was getting mighty heavy. His trek across the vast Australian Outback was brutal and unforgiving. He must replenish his water supply, and soon. Finally, he happened upon the hut of Fintan MacGinnis, a singing, loquacious Irishman who claimed that his abode, in the middle of nowhere, was his refuge as well as exile. Fintan, a mysterious solitary man encouraged Jaxie to stay for a while.
Two souls, one starting life's journey while the other's journey winding down, are both damaged individuals. Was any human connection possible? The harshness and brutalities of life were ever present in this novel, be they the unforgiving land or the cruelty of one's fellow man. The colorful, vernacular language definitely gave "The Shepherd's Hut" a gritty, hardscrabble feel. As a reader unfamiliar with the writing of Tim Winton, I was unaware that he is one of Australia's most acclaimed authors. "The Shepherd's Hut" was an awesome and excellent introduction to Winton's literary gems! I highly recommend this book!
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Shepherd's Hut".
February 13, 2018
Brutal. That is the word that best describes Tim Winton’s new novel, The Shepherd’s Hut. Brutal. I felt bruised and winded on finishing it. Parched and dusty. I stared around me and the familiar was unfamiliar. The valued, valueless.
Jaxie Clackton is a speck on the huge expanse of the WA desert. He is on the run from the law. The outcast’s outcast just desperate to find the one person who really gets him.
And that’s all I want to tell you. The rest you can find out for yourself. And you will find out because you will read it. Everyone will be reading it. This book is set to be an Australian classic.
Another classic, that is. Because Tim Winton has already written Cloudstreet, Dirt Music, Breath and the others. And we come back to Tim Winton because there is always something true in what he writes – a truth that can’t be blurted out or rolled into a neat little aphorism, but has to be felt or experienced through the telling. He is Australia’s truth teller and The Shepherd’s Hut is truth at its most brutal.
Jaxie Clackton is a speck on the huge expanse of the WA desert. He is on the run from the law. The outcast’s outcast just desperate to find the one person who really gets him.
And that’s all I want to tell you. The rest you can find out for yourself. And you will find out because you will read it. Everyone will be reading it. This book is set to be an Australian classic.
Another classic, that is. Because Tim Winton has already written Cloudstreet, Dirt Music, Breath and the others. And we come back to Tim Winton because there is always something true in what he writes – a truth that can’t be blurted out or rolled into a neat little aphorism, but has to be felt or experienced through the telling. He is Australia’s truth teller and The Shepherd’s Hut is truth at its most brutal.
July 10, 2020
This is my first book by Australia’s Tim Winton. THE SHEPHERD’S HUT is set in the remote and brutal land of Western Australia.
An abused teen named Jaxie Clackton leaves home after his father’s death knowing that he will be blamed whether or not he did the killing. Leaving with only water and a rifle, he heads out by foot to find his girlfriend Lee. During his harsh journey he comes across an exiled priest, Fintan MacGillis, living in a shepherd’s hut all alone.
This is the story of an interesting friendship that develops between the two which is spoken in an Australian vernacular that is appropriate, but not one that I could really get into.
I found the surprising end of the book to be well done and a credit to the young Jaxie’s character.
If you wish to read this book take a look at other reviews. Many Goodread’s friends highly recommend this novel.
3.5 out of 5 stars
An abused teen named Jaxie Clackton leaves home after his father’s death knowing that he will be blamed whether or not he did the killing. Leaving with only water and a rifle, he heads out by foot to find his girlfriend Lee. During his harsh journey he comes across an exiled priest, Fintan MacGillis, living in a shepherd’s hut all alone.
This is the story of an interesting friendship that develops between the two which is spoken in an Australian vernacular that is appropriate, but not one that I could really get into.
I found the surprising end of the book to be well done and a credit to the young Jaxie’s character.
If you wish to read this book take a look at other reviews. Many Goodread’s friends highly recommend this novel.
3.5 out of 5 stars
July 14, 2019
It is a big event in the Australian publishing world whenever Tim Winton comes up with a new book. This highly anticipated novel didn’t disappoint. The more I think about it, the more I’m impressed. I mean, I shouldn’t be, because it’s Tim Freakin’ Winton. Every author has the right to come up with duds now and then. You probably heard people-in-the-know bemoaning the dying literary novel etc. It may be so, but don’t tell that to the many people who buy Tim Winton’s novels. Case in point, a few weeks after its release, this is still in the top 10 bestseller list.
On the surface, The Sheperd’s Hut is a simple novel about an abused fifteen-year-old, Jaxie Clackton, fleeing his hometown. He thinks the police is after him, so he hides in the outback, although he’s unprepared.
Jaxie’s is a story of survival, both spiritual and physical. He's such an interesting bloke. To be honest, when I heard this was a first person POV novel, I feared I won’t like it, especially given my previous experience with much loved Australian novels which also featured kids/teenagers (Jasper Jones, The Choke). So, I didn’t expect to be so taken with Jaxie, to care so much.
I must applaud Winton for having the audacity to use the language he did, although if anyone can get away with it, it’s him. The language is rough, Australian slang and expletives heavy – but it felt authentic. In spite of the low brow language in use, Winton succeded to write a very atmospheric novel. And all this about the outback, a mostly arid and flat landscape.
The novel has only two protagonists, Jaxie and the old, Irish recluse he meets in the outback. Their relationship was interesting and unexpected. Winton steered clear from sentimentality, I admire that a great deal.
The Sheperd’s Hut is a masterfully crafted novel, unique, with unforgettable characters and it's quintessentially Australian. In my view, this novel has the makings of an Australian classic novel, just like Cloudstreet.
This novel goes towards my Australian Author Challenge on www.bookloverbooksreviews.com.
On the surface, The Sheperd’s Hut is a simple novel about an abused fifteen-year-old, Jaxie Clackton, fleeing his hometown. He thinks the police is after him, so he hides in the outback, although he’s unprepared.
Jaxie’s is a story of survival, both spiritual and physical. He's such an interesting bloke. To be honest, when I heard this was a first person POV novel, I feared I won’t like it, especially given my previous experience with much loved Australian novels which also featured kids/teenagers (Jasper Jones, The Choke). So, I didn’t expect to be so taken with Jaxie, to care so much.
I must applaud Winton for having the audacity to use the language he did, although if anyone can get away with it, it’s him. The language is rough, Australian slang and expletives heavy – but it felt authentic. In spite of the low brow language in use, Winton succeded to write a very atmospheric novel. And all this about the outback, a mostly arid and flat landscape.
The novel has only two protagonists, Jaxie and the old, Irish recluse he meets in the outback. Their relationship was interesting and unexpected. Winton steered clear from sentimentality, I admire that a great deal.
The Sheperd’s Hut is a masterfully crafted novel, unique, with unforgettable characters and it's quintessentially Australian. In my view, this novel has the makings of an Australian classic novel, just like Cloudstreet.
This novel goes towards my Australian Author Challenge on www.bookloverbooksreviews.com.
August 15, 2022
Audiobook….read by Kate Mulvany
…..6 hours and 13 minutes
With an abusive father, Captain Wankbag, (a butcher who walked out on his cancer stricken wife and son), Jaxie Clackton, a fifteen year old teenager in Western Australia was a scared puppy!
After Jaxie’s mother died—he lived alone with his father for a short time. His father was brutal - as abusive as anyone could be — both physically and emotionally.
A freak accident killed his dad instantly.
Jaxie was worried that people in his small town (Monkton in Western Australia) would blamed him for his father’s death - so he takes off running without much thought-out preparation.
I wondered why the community hadn’t helped Jaxie earlier. They must’ve known Sid Clackton, was an alcoholic and abusive.
However, with no vehicle transportation, little food, a rifle, a small jug of water, and very tired walking feet, Jaxie flees.
Jaxie was hoping to find his cousin, Lee, (whom he loved - his only friend- and hoped she would run away with him). Lee lived at least an hour away.
So while on foot, hot and thirsty, Jaxie treks off into the outback wilderness.
The outback dangers were numerous: poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, crocodiles, etc. I began to think that somebody (God?/!), was looking out for this young teenager. Hoped so!
Along the way, Jaxie meets an ex-Priest named Fintan MacGillis who was living in a shepherd’s hut. A cautionary relationship of sorts develops with the old geezer.
Jaxie begins to feel comfort with the priest - a type of temporary safety and security. He debates whether to stay or continue on to find his cousin.
The storytelling is intense, with fitting profanity, painful memories, and puzzling understandings….
written with sparkling scintillating Aussie language—[the audiobook reader was awesome/terrific]
With a heartfelt ending…I felt warmly satiated ….
I continue to look forward to reading more books by Tim
Winton….(one of Australia’s greatest authors).
…..6 hours and 13 minutes
With an abusive father, Captain Wankbag, (a butcher who walked out on his cancer stricken wife and son), Jaxie Clackton, a fifteen year old teenager in Western Australia was a scared puppy!
After Jaxie’s mother died—he lived alone with his father for a short time. His father was brutal - as abusive as anyone could be — both physically and emotionally.
A freak accident killed his dad instantly.
Jaxie was worried that people in his small town (Monkton in Western Australia) would blamed him for his father’s death - so he takes off running without much thought-out preparation.
I wondered why the community hadn’t helped Jaxie earlier. They must’ve known Sid Clackton, was an alcoholic and abusive.
However, with no vehicle transportation, little food, a rifle, a small jug of water, and very tired walking feet, Jaxie flees.
Jaxie was hoping to find his cousin, Lee, (whom he loved - his only friend- and hoped she would run away with him). Lee lived at least an hour away.
So while on foot, hot and thirsty, Jaxie treks off into the outback wilderness.
The outback dangers were numerous: poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders, crocodiles, etc. I began to think that somebody (God?/!), was looking out for this young teenager. Hoped so!
Along the way, Jaxie meets an ex-Priest named Fintan MacGillis who was living in a shepherd’s hut. A cautionary relationship of sorts develops with the old geezer.
Jaxie begins to feel comfort with the priest - a type of temporary safety and security. He debates whether to stay or continue on to find his cousin.
The storytelling is intense, with fitting profanity, painful memories, and puzzling understandings….
written with sparkling scintillating Aussie language—[the audiobook reader was awesome/terrific]
With a heartfelt ending…I felt warmly satiated ….
I continue to look forward to reading more books by Tim
Winton….(one of Australia’s greatest authors).
December 16, 2018
Ok, I basically stopped breathing for the last section of this book.
Tim Winton, literary genius.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Tim Winton, literary genius.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
April 1, 2018
The truth is I’ve been reluctant to pick up another Tim Winton book, I tried reading Cloudstreet back in my early 20’s and only managed a third of the book before abandoning it, so for me I wasn’t overly enthusiast about picking this book up. But I’m sure glad I did. This felt different to Cloudstreet as the writing here feels raw, intense and brutal it’s a story that wasn’t easy to read but I was compelled nevertheless. The Australian remote bush setting and the language was used effectively to draw me into Jaxies’ story. The language is as rough as Jaxie himself, but it’s also it’s charm if you can get past the Aussie vernacular, it is not at all diluted, non Australian readers might struggle!
I wasn’t sure where the story was headed but I was invested until the last section where it sort of fell off and ended quite abruptly. It’s clear that Tim Winton is a writer with immense talent so I’m pleased that this book cemented my faith in him again. I might even polish off Cloudstreet finally...It was a solid 4 stars until the rushed ending.
I wasn’t sure where the story was headed but I was invested until the last section where it sort of fell off and ended quite abruptly. It’s clear that Tim Winton is a writer with immense talent so I’m pleased that this book cemented my faith in him again. I might even polish off Cloudstreet finally...It was a solid 4 stars until the rushed ending.
April 30, 2018
In this book, Winton writes like an Australian version of Cormac McCarthy who decided to tackle the topic of toxic masculinity - yes, you heard that right, and the result is absolutely astounding. The story is told from the perspective of protagonist and antihero Jaxie Clackton (who speaks in strong Australian slang), a teenage boy who grew up with a violent, alcoholic father and a mother who stood by and failed to protect him, until she finally died from cancer. When his father dies by accident, Jaxie fears that he will be blamed because everybody knew that he hated his dad (thus inferring that the whole community must have known about his situation, but nobody stepped in).
As a consequence, Jaxie decides to run away and goes on a journey through the Australian wilderness in order to pick up his cousin Lee, whom he loves, and ultimately build a better life with her. When he comes across an old shepherd's hut which is inhabited by a mysterious former priest, this encounter will change Jaxie's life forever.
This novel is not for the faint of heart: There is a lot of blood and slaughtering (literal and metaphorical) going on, and Jaxie, who has never been protected and cared for by his parents, is shockingly brutal and caught up in his idea that he needs to show disaffection and what he perceives as strength at all times. His disconnection and alienation becomes almost unbearable to read when he talks about his cruelty against animals.
Pain, killing and death are major themes in the book, and the questions what differentiates dead meat from a living creature and whether there is something like a "good death" lead directly to the existential challenge to find something to live for.
As you might expect in a novel that stars an Irish-Catholic ex-priest and a teenager from Monkton (Monk-ton, got it?) hanging out in a shepherd's (!) hut near a salt (!) lake, the author contemplates questions of spirituality, using biblical themes and letting his characters meditate on pantheism in the Australian wilderness. But the question whether there is a God or not is not the main concern here; rather, it's the question how to overcome alienation and loneliness, how to learn empathy and to feel connected to nature and other people. Ultimately, it's also the question of how we can feel ourselves.
I really enjoyed how Winton managed to convey the inner workings of Jaxie, and how is whole persona is challenged and questioned by someone who simply sees him and listens to him. This is a terribly disturbing and brutal story of redemption, and it is equally cruel and beautiful.
As a consequence, Jaxie decides to run away and goes on a journey through the Australian wilderness in order to pick up his cousin Lee, whom he loves, and ultimately build a better life with her. When he comes across an old shepherd's hut which is inhabited by a mysterious former priest, this encounter will change Jaxie's life forever.
This novel is not for the faint of heart: There is a lot of blood and slaughtering (literal and metaphorical) going on, and Jaxie, who has never been protected and cared for by his parents, is shockingly brutal and caught up in his idea that he needs to show disaffection and what he perceives as strength at all times. His disconnection and alienation becomes almost unbearable to read when he talks about his cruelty against animals.
Pain, killing and death are major themes in the book, and the questions what differentiates dead meat from a living creature and whether there is something like a "good death" lead directly to the existential challenge to find something to live for.
As you might expect in a novel that stars an Irish-Catholic ex-priest and a teenager from Monkton (Monk-ton, got it?) hanging out in a shepherd's (!) hut near a salt (!) lake, the author contemplates questions of spirituality, using biblical themes and letting his characters meditate on pantheism in the Australian wilderness. But the question whether there is a God or not is not the main concern here; rather, it's the question how to overcome alienation and loneliness, how to learn empathy and to feel connected to nature and other people. Ultimately, it's also the question of how we can feel ourselves.
I really enjoyed how Winton managed to convey the inner workings of Jaxie, and how is whole persona is challenged and questioned by someone who simply sees him and listens to him. This is a terribly disturbing and brutal story of redemption, and it is equally cruel and beautiful.
August 3, 2018
I know what I’m getting into with a Tim Winton book - anguish, scorching landscape, beauty, and characters that are damaged, broken, and often irredeemable. His books are brazenly West Australian, outdoorsy and blokey; I’m none of these things, yet oddly when I open a Tim Winton book it’s often because I’m homesick. The people and places of his books have almost nothing to do with the faraway and urban side of the continent where I grew up...so how does he make me so nostalgic and brooding? The writing. It’s always been the writing.
And I wish I could say I stayed up late thinking about him but the truth is I was only awake a little while. I was so tired the swag felt like a sponge that soaked me up. I went to sleep like someone disappearing from the earth, like rain sopped into dust.
This is a painful portrait of abuse, rage, neglect, incest, violence, gore, hatred, yearning, and a kind of desperate hope that will make you brace for an inevitable fall. Our protagonist, Jaxie, flees a violent home and brutal scene to embark on a doomed journey into the unforgiving “mulga.” You should go into this not knowing much more than that. There was much here that kept me feeling uneasy and nervous, and at the climax I wondered how much of what we are is caused by circumstance and how much was always there hibernating. The Shepherd’s Hut is a little bit Cormac McCarthy, a little bit Wake in Fright, and a lot Tim Winton. I hope he ignores the PC police and keeps writing. And I hope he never changes.
Winton finds the idea that male writers should apologise for being interested in the male experience offensive. Women writers “don’t have quotas in their fiction about making sure they get enough men characters”, he says. “No one’s policing women’s fiction for lazy tropes about male behaviour or male characteristics. There’s no reciprocity there but as soon as I say that I sound like I’m bleating, so I never said it.
“Why should men have to apologise for writing about men in the same way? I never apologised for being Australian writing about Australians. I never apologised about being a West Australian writing to a largely indifferent Australia about my no-account people in my no-account place.”
(from a recent interview by The Guardian)
And I wish I could say I stayed up late thinking about him but the truth is I was only awake a little while. I was so tired the swag felt like a sponge that soaked me up. I went to sleep like someone disappearing from the earth, like rain sopped into dust.
This is a painful portrait of abuse, rage, neglect, incest, violence, gore, hatred, yearning, and a kind of desperate hope that will make you brace for an inevitable fall. Our protagonist, Jaxie, flees a violent home and brutal scene to embark on a doomed journey into the unforgiving “mulga.” You should go into this not knowing much more than that. There was much here that kept me feeling uneasy and nervous, and at the climax I wondered how much of what we are is caused by circumstance and how much was always there hibernating. The Shepherd’s Hut is a little bit Cormac McCarthy, a little bit Wake in Fright, and a lot Tim Winton. I hope he ignores the PC police and keeps writing. And I hope he never changes.
Winton finds the idea that male writers should apologise for being interested in the male experience offensive. Women writers “don’t have quotas in their fiction about making sure they get enough men characters”, he says. “No one’s policing women’s fiction for lazy tropes about male behaviour or male characteristics. There’s no reciprocity there but as soon as I say that I sound like I’m bleating, so I never said it.
“Why should men have to apologise for writing about men in the same way? I never apologised for being Australian writing about Australians. I never apologised about being a West Australian writing to a largely indifferent Australia about my no-account people in my no-account place.”
(from a recent interview by The Guardian)
June 27, 2019
This powerful book tells the story of two outcasts, seemingly very different, who develop an unlikely friendship with many bumps along the way. Set in desolate, but beautiful western Australia the fifteen-year-old Jaxie and the Irish priest, Fintan, find meaning and purpose that change their lives.
So many themes in this book are frequently found in novels, but Winton's superior writing brings such a fresh approach. Decency, humanity, loyalty, spirituality, courage, and death are poignantly portrayed as these two misfits come slowly to trust themselves and each other.
This book has everything I value in fiction: well developed characters, beautifully described landscapes, great dialogue (I loved the gritty vernacular of Jaxie), and set in Australia. What could be better?
This is, in many ways, a simple but complex book. It is simply, wonderful!
So many themes in this book are frequently found in novels, but Winton's superior writing brings such a fresh approach. Decency, humanity, loyalty, spirituality, courage, and death are poignantly portrayed as these two misfits come slowly to trust themselves and each other.
This book has everything I value in fiction: well developed characters, beautifully described landscapes, great dialogue (I loved the gritty vernacular of Jaxie), and set in Australia. What could be better?
This is, in many ways, a simple but complex book. It is simply, wonderful!
July 11, 2018
Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got. Sometimes I wonder if that nasty meanness is in me too, like he’s passed it on. Does that mean I’m gunna be that way? To Lee? And our own kids ... thinking like that puts the wind up me. To live you gotta be hard, I know that.
I was drawn to this book, my first by this (twice Booker shortlisted) author, by an intriguing excerpt in The Guardian from a speech he gave while promoting the book, one in which he sets out clearly his interest in exploring the topic of toxic masculinity and it's poisonous influence on boys in turn marginalised by society.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
The book is about one such boy Jaxie, who lives in a small Western Australian twin with his mother and physically abusive father - whose own actions and character it is hinted come from wartime traumas witnessed in Vietnam or Korea.
All the mechanisms which should protect Jaxie against the abuse fail him: institutional - his school are focused on dealing with the symptoms of the abuse as they emerge in Jamie's violent and delinquent behaviour (the passing on of the toxicity) and have no interest in the causes; societal - his father's friendship with the police chief of the small town causes his neighbours to turn a blind eye and deaf ear; familial - Jaxie long assumed his mother's actions, even her unwillingness to leave his father, are focused on protecting him, but after a pivotal row one Christmas (when his father discovers his clandestine physical relationship with his cousin Lee) he realises even his mother will not protect him; his cousin is forbidden contact and his mother soon succumbs to cancer cementing his sense of abandonment.
All of this is recounted in flashback, the actual narrative of the novel beginning when Jaxie stumbles across his father's dead body, crushed under the car he was working on, and convinced he will be accused of engineering the death, decides to flee to the deserted outback, with an eventual I'll thought through plan to get to and elope with his cousin, hundreds of miles North.
His father was a butcher and the tracking, survival and butchering skills Jaxie has picked up as part of his poisonous inheritance just about serve to keep him alive.
At a pivotal point he decides to venture to a salt plain as he needs a preservation mechanism for the meat he is hunting and there stumbles across another person living in the wilds - Fintan, an Irish priest, seemingly placed in a rough shepherds hut by his church as some form of part punishment/part isolation for some only ever hInted at actions he committed and atrocities (perhaps anti-communist massacres) he witnessed.
Jaxie, perhaps for the first time, being given the benefit of the doubt by an adult, teaches an uneasy truce with Fintan and the two live in close proximity.
Thing is, this old dude couldna known that. He just rolled the dice, didn’t he? He wondered if I was a civilized man, like he said. Then he bet his life on it. But that didn’t mean I could trust him. A bloke that doesn’t shoot you on sight, a man who offers you a feed, he could still be the one puts you in to the cops.
Both elements of the Fintan character as an Irish priest are important. The Irish / Australian link features in the Wild Colonial Boy, an Irish-Aussie ballad that Fintan songs when Jaxie first meets him and in their terrible closing encounter and one which could have been an alternate title for this book.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_W...
Religion, faith, redemption, death, justice, sacrifice, good and evil all feature heavily in the book - as Fintan shares something of his life and worldview and gradually allows Jaxie to re examine his own.
Flawed families are also important - both Jaxie and Fintan simultaneously abandoned by and hugely resentful of their family (the Catholic church for the latter) but also finding in it their only sustenance (physical for Fintan, emotional for Daxie) that ultimately allows them to continue.
A sense of place is vital to this novel. Unlike the typical Western Australian coastal settings of Winton’s novels, this is set in the desolate salt planes and old gold mines of the state. A location Winton has said he had always wanted to use as a setting for a novel but one rich with symbolism for his thesis on the crisis of masculinity.
Referring back to the speech above, the desolation of abandoned gold mines and prospector huts stands in for the way traditional masculinity has been justifiably hollowed out, but not replenished with any new sustainable form of male identity:
We’ve scraped our culture bare of ritual pathways to adulthood. There are lots of reasons for having clear-felled and burnt our own traditions since the 1960s, and some of them are very good reasons. But I’m not sure what we’ve replaced them with. We’ve left our young people to fend for themselves.
And the harsh poisoned salt mines for the toxicity of what currently stands as modern masculinity
What are we left with? The sly first beer your uncle slips you. The 18th birthday party where the keg is the icon. Maybe the B&S ball, if you live in the bush. First drink, first root, first bog-lap in your mum’s Corolla. Call me a snob, but that strikes me as pretty thin stuff. This, surely, is cultural impoverishment. And in such a prosperous country. To my mind, that’s salt rising to the surface, poisoning the future.
The book is recounted in the first person by Jaxie, whose speech is reproduced by Winton raw, salted (just as Jaxie salts his meat) with Aussie expletives and slang (although nothing an English reader would not understand immediately - Ute, VB, Abo) - I had originally used the word unfiltered, but actually it becomes clear that the book is in fact told as remembered by Jaxie later and explicitly filtered through and altered by the shift in his worldview from his encounter with Fintan.
Fintan's speech (as remembered by Jaxie) is littered with Irish (i particularly enjoyed "look at you with your orangemans stare") and biblical allusions (I noted phrases from Proverbs, Daniel, Ecclesiastes, 1 Samuel, John).
The book reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's the road and follows I think in the tradition of Hucklebery Finn - a book Winton lead with in a recent interview when asked to list his favourite books of all time. In the following question, asked to identify the last good book he read, Winton plumped for Jon McGregor, not Reservoir 13 though (despite describing it as great) but Even The Dogs - and ultimately the two books have much in common: powerful but uncomfortable reads, confronting difficult elements in their society, alluding to the aftermath of active military service in creating those elements, but acting as an urgent plea for readers not to judge the actions and dates of those elements, but simply to start to try and understand and engage with them.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC by Netgalley.
November 14, 2018
Jaxie Claxton, an abused and neglected 15 year old is on the run after he arrived home to discover his father crushed to death under his car. After his brutal upbringing, he's long wanted his father dead and is sure the police will blame him. He sets off ill-equipped to travel north across the dry and unforgiving WA salt plains to the only person who has ever cared for him, a girl called Lee. Jaxie is a curious mixture - in many ways he is old beyond his years and in others he is naive and immature. Poorly educated, he's rough and ready but can look after himself and knows how to butcher a roo and survive in the bush. When he stumbles across an exiled Irish priest in a shepherd's hut, he forms a friendship of sorts with the lonely old man and learns how to trust another person, possibly for the first time.
Tin Winton is so good at getting in the head of his characters. He delivers a first person account of Jaxie's tale of flight and survival complete with his gritty slang but also his sensitivity in appreciating the bleak but harshly beautiful country around him. The language is spare but lyrical in a harsh and brutal setting and Jaxie is a unique character whose story will continue to resonate with me.
Tin Winton is so good at getting in the head of his characters. He delivers a first person account of Jaxie's tale of flight and survival complete with his gritty slang but also his sensitivity in appreciating the bleak but harshly beautiful country around him. The language is spare but lyrical in a harsh and brutal setting and Jaxie is a unique character whose story will continue to resonate with me.
June 7, 2019
5★
“I peered up the street through the shadows and just to squint that tiniest bit hurt to the living f**k. When I touched me face it felt like a punkin full of razor blades.”
Jaxie Clackton, 15, has just come to and escaped after being knocked out and tossed in the bone bin by his father in his butcher shop. Just the latest of the many times he’s survived a beating at the hands of Captain Wankbag, as he calls him, or the Cap.
Mum says that’s not respectful. Well, yeah, it’s not. And her point is?
Jaxie has to help out in the butcher shop but tries hard to stay out of his father's way. He knows what he's capable of and that he could do far worse than punch his head in.
“I hear the rattle. The knife pouch. The steels and blades. The sound of death.”
The Cap is friends with a local cop and gets away with a lot. Jaxie gets known at school as Horsemeat Claxton.
“Just before a summer storm one time when the Cap was away shooting horses and sawing them into prime Angus beef.”
Jaxie speaks in his own distinctive voice, reminiscing while he’s on the run in the bush. He’s a pretty self-sufficient kid, can shoot straight, cook a lizard, skin and butcher a roo – but he’s still a kid. While he remembered to grab a water jug with the rest of his gear when he took off, he forgot a hat and a knife! Of all things, a knife! And a tin opener for the tins he grabbed. He’s a kid, but he’s not afraid to make fun of himself for these oversights.
Mum was nice but distant, and he never understood why she chose and married his father, but he’s determined he will do better with Lee, with whom he’s decided he’s in love and who lives “north” somewhere. That’s his destination.
Like the author, Jaxie is at home in the bush. Even at school, he enjoyed detention because he could sit out on the verandah and watch the peewees, busy little black and white birds.
“There was a couple would come right in off the quadrangle. Every time. Right in under the verandah there to the bench where I was always parked up. Come just to my feet. Neither one much bigger than your hand. Sticking their chests out, making that noise to see me off or just see what I’d do. And remembering that made me happy.
. . .
It was worth catching the bus to sit out under the verandah all day and look at the flagpole and watch them aggro little peewees. Safer than staying home, I’ll give you the tip.”
No, home certainly wasn’t safe. And he’s seen so much of the bad stuff in life, that you wonder if anything can make it better. He was taken to see Nanna laid out after she died and told to brush her hair.
“Nanna was the first dead person I ever saw. . . I was eight then maybe. And I really didn’t want to touch her . . . Her hair was blue against the pillow. And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That’s what dead things are. She was gone but not gone. Meat is something gone and not gone. it didn’t feel right. Never really does.”
You don’t like to think of an eight-year-old thinking like that. And at 15, he’s very childish in some respects and way too experienced in others. He's one of what Winton calls the spiky boys that everyone knows.
A school psychologist simply asked if everything was okay at home, Jaxie said of course, and she went away, happy. Sounds ridiculous, but I know it happens. Poor kid.
He's a sensitive soul, really. He stumbles on an empty shack.
“There’s a sad feeling in a place people have just walked out of and left behind. Could be only me thinks shit like this. And you could probably say there’s plenty houses feel just as sad with people still in them. God knows our place was one of them for sure. . . Somehow it’s more lonely than being on your own in the bush.”
There are plenty of reviews about how the story goes, but I’ll leave Jaxie here, early on in his escape, and mention just one of the countless descriptions for which I love to read Winton’s work.
“The sun got low. All the shadows stretched out past me towards the hut and crept up to that old man’s feet. They were like dogs on their bellies to him.”
Winton puts us in the mulga, the scrub, the lakes of salt with their mirages and a kind of quicksand (quicksalt?), and in the fierce weather of this part of Western Australia. And we learn that they aren’t the only things to worry about in this lonely country. Winton says when he writes, he always starts with place.
“‘I don't set out to write a novel about anything,’ Winton explained.
‘I don't do themes or issues, I just write about a place and the scum that bubbles up out of it, which is the humans. I just follow them and see what gives.’
The scum that bubbles up in The Shepherd's Hut is Jaxie.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-27...
Winton may not pick a theme or an issue to write a story about, but his strong feelings and opinions about right and wrong, boys and men, and the bush will always find their way to the surface - bubble up with the scum, as he might have said.
I can never recommend him highly enough. He’s one of those writers who manages to convey such a strong sense of place and character with very few words. And they aren’t your two-dollar words either, as a friend of mine used to call them. His writing is accessible and easy but oh, so thought-provoking.
“He talked so f**king much it was like a junkpile he chucked at you. You had to sort through all these bent up words to figure which was bulls**and which was true.”
Simple, but later he shows why we need to do better by our boys and young men so they don’t keep replicating the silent and/or violent models they may live with. Jaxie had almost nobody to learn from.
“Us Clacktons never done our thinking out aloud. Or our talking neither really. Wankbag only ever talked about what he could hold in his hand. Before he closed his fist on it and clubbed you with it. And Mum, I wonder if she ever could tell me what she wanted. In the end she had nothing to say to me at all. Maybe too much talk’s better than that.”
I’m happy to have as much talk as Tim Winton is capable of chucking at us, but nobody in their right mind could call it junk.
“I peered up the street through the shadows and just to squint that tiniest bit hurt to the living f**k. When I touched me face it felt like a punkin full of razor blades.”
Jaxie Clackton, 15, has just come to and escaped after being knocked out and tossed in the bone bin by his father in his butcher shop. Just the latest of the many times he’s survived a beating at the hands of Captain Wankbag, as he calls him, or the Cap.
Mum says that’s not respectful. Well, yeah, it’s not. And her point is?
Jaxie has to help out in the butcher shop but tries hard to stay out of his father's way. He knows what he's capable of and that he could do far worse than punch his head in.
“I hear the rattle. The knife pouch. The steels and blades. The sound of death.”
The Cap is friends with a local cop and gets away with a lot. Jaxie gets known at school as Horsemeat Claxton.
“Just before a summer storm one time when the Cap was away shooting horses and sawing them into prime Angus beef.”
Jaxie speaks in his own distinctive voice, reminiscing while he’s on the run in the bush. He’s a pretty self-sufficient kid, can shoot straight, cook a lizard, skin and butcher a roo – but he’s still a kid. While he remembered to grab a water jug with the rest of his gear when he took off, he forgot a hat and a knife! Of all things, a knife! And a tin opener for the tins he grabbed. He’s a kid, but he’s not afraid to make fun of himself for these oversights.
Mum was nice but distant, and he never understood why she chose and married his father, but he’s determined he will do better with Lee, with whom he’s decided he’s in love and who lives “north” somewhere. That’s his destination.
Like the author, Jaxie is at home in the bush. Even at school, he enjoyed detention because he could sit out on the verandah and watch the peewees, busy little black and white birds.
“There was a couple would come right in off the quadrangle. Every time. Right in under the verandah there to the bench where I was always parked up. Come just to my feet. Neither one much bigger than your hand. Sticking their chests out, making that noise to see me off or just see what I’d do. And remembering that made me happy.
. . .
It was worth catching the bus to sit out under the verandah all day and look at the flagpole and watch them aggro little peewees. Safer than staying home, I’ll give you the tip.”
No, home certainly wasn’t safe. And he’s seen so much of the bad stuff in life, that you wonder if anything can make it better. He was taken to see Nanna laid out after she died and told to brush her hair.
“Nanna was the first dead person I ever saw. . . I was eight then maybe. And I really didn’t want to touch her . . . Her hair was blue against the pillow. And when me hand bumped her cheek she was cold and heavy and a kind of spark went through me, like a terrible familiar feeling. And I understood it then. She was meat. That’s what dead things are. She was gone but not gone. Meat is something gone and not gone. it didn’t feel right. Never really does.”
You don’t like to think of an eight-year-old thinking like that. And at 15, he’s very childish in some respects and way too experienced in others. He's one of what Winton calls the spiky boys that everyone knows.
A school psychologist simply asked if everything was okay at home, Jaxie said of course, and she went away, happy. Sounds ridiculous, but I know it happens. Poor kid.
He's a sensitive soul, really. He stumbles on an empty shack.
“There’s a sad feeling in a place people have just walked out of and left behind. Could be only me thinks shit like this. And you could probably say there’s plenty houses feel just as sad with people still in them. God knows our place was one of them for sure. . . Somehow it’s more lonely than being on your own in the bush.”
There are plenty of reviews about how the story goes, but I’ll leave Jaxie here, early on in his escape, and mention just one of the countless descriptions for which I love to read Winton’s work.
“The sun got low. All the shadows stretched out past me towards the hut and crept up to that old man’s feet. They were like dogs on their bellies to him.”
Winton puts us in the mulga, the scrub, the lakes of salt with their mirages and a kind of quicksand (quicksalt?), and in the fierce weather of this part of Western Australia. And we learn that they aren’t the only things to worry about in this lonely country. Winton says when he writes, he always starts with place.
“‘I don't set out to write a novel about anything,’ Winton explained.
‘I don't do themes or issues, I just write about a place and the scum that bubbles up out of it, which is the humans. I just follow them and see what gives.’
The scum that bubbles up in The Shepherd's Hut is Jaxie.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-27...
Winton may not pick a theme or an issue to write a story about, but his strong feelings and opinions about right and wrong, boys and men, and the bush will always find their way to the surface - bubble up with the scum, as he might have said.
I can never recommend him highly enough. He’s one of those writers who manages to convey such a strong sense of place and character with very few words. And they aren’t your two-dollar words either, as a friend of mine used to call them. His writing is accessible and easy but oh, so thought-provoking.
“He talked so f**king much it was like a junkpile he chucked at you. You had to sort through all these bent up words to figure which was bulls**and which was true.”
Simple, but later he shows why we need to do better by our boys and young men so they don’t keep replicating the silent and/or violent models they may live with. Jaxie had almost nobody to learn from.
“Us Clacktons never done our thinking out aloud. Or our talking neither really. Wankbag only ever talked about what he could hold in his hand. Before he closed his fist on it and clubbed you with it. And Mum, I wonder if she ever could tell me what she wanted. In the end she had nothing to say to me at all. Maybe too much talk’s better than that.”
I’m happy to have as much talk as Tim Winton is capable of chucking at us, but nobody in their right mind could call it junk.
December 27, 2019
My first Tim Winton novel and it certainly won't be the last. I enjoyed the stunning flavor of the language, the vivid landscape descriptions, and what we didn't learn was of little consequence. Soooo good.
May 28, 2018
I am beginning to know early on now when I am about to 5-star a book, and in this case the opening chapter pretty much confirmed it. For me there was just something magical in the writing even before the story takes shape. It's a good sign when time outside the book ceases to exist, your right there camping in the Salmon gums with Jaxie Clackton. Getting the "yips" as he would say, but being too staunch to admit it.
If the great Australian western was a genre then Tim Winton would be the master.
The landscape of Western Australia is nearly always the canvas in Wintons work but also a character and I felt that particularly in this book. From the claustrophobic hopelessness of small town Monkton, to the vast tracks of wild inhospitable land, dotted with derelict miners shacks. It's beautiful and menacing. Winton plays so cleverly with foreshadowing in this book. Seemingly insignificant details such as wind shifts, and sudden odd silences create a mood where both the reader and the characters are jumping at shadows. It's a magnificent writer who can use landscape like this and keep me interested when for pages it is just one character moving through it with only his thoughts for company.
Oh but what a character he is.
Jaxie Clackton's voice is hard to shake - foul-mouthed in a most gloriously Australian way, violent, yes, shockingly so, damaged, impulsive, resilient. He absolutely will make or break this novel for you. While he is certainly very much a singular youth in some ways - he makes short work of field-dressing a Kangaroo and knows how to survive alone on a perilous trek. The kind of emotional and physical abuse he deals with is a universal theme.
I guess you could call this a very "muscular" coming-of-age novel but that is to lessen it somehow as it's so much more than that. The finer details of this book are impossible to discuss in a review without ruining the reading experience for others, but trust me I think the journey is worth it.
Basically, if you already know you love Tim Winton you won't be disappointed in this and if this is your first book from him then it's a great introduction. However, fair warning, many animals were harmed in the making of this story. While it is probably not Cormac McCarthy violent, it is unflinching. You may also need a guide to Australian slang....
If the great Australian western was a genre then Tim Winton would be the master.
The landscape of Western Australia is nearly always the canvas in Wintons work but also a character and I felt that particularly in this book. From the claustrophobic hopelessness of small town Monkton, to the vast tracks of wild inhospitable land, dotted with derelict miners shacks. It's beautiful and menacing. Winton plays so cleverly with foreshadowing in this book. Seemingly insignificant details such as wind shifts, and sudden odd silences create a mood where both the reader and the characters are jumping at shadows. It's a magnificent writer who can use landscape like this and keep me interested when for pages it is just one character moving through it with only his thoughts for company.
Oh but what a character he is.
Jaxie Clackton's voice is hard to shake - foul-mouthed in a most gloriously Australian way, violent, yes, shockingly so, damaged, impulsive, resilient. He absolutely will make or break this novel for you. While he is certainly very much a singular youth in some ways - he makes short work of field-dressing a Kangaroo and knows how to survive alone on a perilous trek. The kind of emotional and physical abuse he deals with is a universal theme.
I guess you could call this a very "muscular" coming-of-age novel but that is to lessen it somehow as it's so much more than that. The finer details of this book are impossible to discuss in a review without ruining the reading experience for others, but trust me I think the journey is worth it.
Basically, if you already know you love Tim Winton you won't be disappointed in this and if this is your first book from him then it's a great introduction. However, fair warning, many animals were harmed in the making of this story. While it is probably not Cormac McCarthy violent, it is unflinching. You may also need a guide to Australian slang....
June 22, 2019
Jaxie Clackton is only fifteen years old, but his life so far has been a lifetime of misery, abuse and neglect. Jaxie had always wished his father was dead because of the manner he treated him, but you know what they say be careful what you wish for. When Jaxie returns home one day it looks like his wish had come true when he discovers his father dead, crushed under a car that he had obviously been working on. Jaxie wasn’t sticking around to get the blame for the death of his father that was for certain, hence he takes off in search of the one person who ever truly understood him.
Jaxie sets off on his journey with only a rifle and water jug, but will these things keep him safe against the wilderness of Western Australia or had he taken on more than he could handle? I rather enjoyed this book by Aussie author, Tim Winton. The only thing that lets this book down a little for me was there was too many profanities throughout this story. In parts of the story I can, I understand the need for them, but toward the closing of the story I’d had enough of them. In saying that I still have no hesitation in recommending this book because the story itself was a very absorbing and moving read and at times a little sad. A story of endurance, friendship and loneliness.
Jaxie sets off on his journey with only a rifle and water jug, but will these things keep him safe against the wilderness of Western Australia or had he taken on more than he could handle? I rather enjoyed this book by Aussie author, Tim Winton. The only thing that lets this book down a little for me was there was too many profanities throughout this story. In parts of the story I can, I understand the need for them, but toward the closing of the story I’d had enough of them. In saying that I still have no hesitation in recommending this book because the story itself was a very absorbing and moving read and at times a little sad. A story of endurance, friendship and loneliness.
June 9, 2018
This is a spare and elemental tale, somewhere between a biblical parable and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” Jaxie is a lad of 15 running away from home, a tiny town in Western Australia. After his mother dies of cancer, it just got too tough to put up with the perpetual physical abuse from his alcoholic father (Captain Wankbag he calls him). He sets out on foot to cross a salt desert to get to his cousin Lee, a girlfriend who was the only light of his life before the family put an end to their secret relationship by moving her elsewhere. Along the way he runs out of food and water and hunting for game a desperate endeavor. Luckily comes across a shepherd’s hut on the shore of a dried salt lake. But as he cases the place from a distance, he finds it is occupied by some old coot who is perpetually talking or singing to himself. The man, Fintan, eventually becomes aware of Jaxie and invites him to eat, trying his best to sooth his fears and suspicions about his dangerousness. They are both so lonely that an odd sort of friendship develops.
It turns out that Fintan has somehow been exiled there for something bad that he has done. Which he never explains. But as they go about as a team taking care of their survival, gathering firewood, hunting, etc., they come to trust each other while respecting each other’s secrets. Human civilization at the bare bones level, as I said elemental. Some of the songs Fintan sings feature Ned Kelley, a notorious outlaw with Robin Hood features from the 19th century. The romance of surviving beyond all the evils of the powerful monsters of the world ends when they come across the path of some bad dudes using the remote wilderness for their own nefarious activities. As Jaxie says about why he defended a rare friend in grade school from bullies:
I’m loyal, me, and not many people understand what that means. Once I’m in I’m all in. For good.
I love the resilience of this pair of social rejects and was impressed with the precise poetry of Jaxie’s vernacular. For example, here is a great sample of gumption in his inner voice about his origins:
I knew what people thought, but. Jaxie Claxton, that dirty fuckup. He was getting what he deserved. And his mum was just another budgie-brain female too stupid to save herself. The Cap they had to be nice to, to his fat face anyway… But they had him pegged. Claxtons, we were rubbish. Town like Monkton, one pub, one roadhouse, rail silo and twelve streets, half of them empty, small enough everyone heard something and they all had a fucking opinion. But no neighbor ever once came running when mum needed help. No one called the cops. Not with that great one-eyed pile of shit running amuck.
By the time he went off to high school, his experience with his father’s punishments made him fearless in the face of bullies:
Every numbnuts in the district wanted to have a go, even the Abos and fuck, they fight wild. I was never big but I was game. …Any prick wanted a blue I’d give it to him hot and hard and I wasn’t waiting round till he was ready.
Sometimes this kind of savage approach to life is just the courageous path one needs to survive. Fortunately, Jaxie has the wisdom to recognize another kind of courage in this old man in the wilderness:
I never did know what to make of Fintan MacGillis. In the end you could say I knew what kind of man he was and maybe that was the important thing. …
He was one of them geezers been out on his own so long he talks to himself all day, tells himself what he’s about to do, what he should do, what he’s forgotten to get done. He talked so much it was like a junkpile he chucked at you. …With that accent of his and the way he said things fancy and musical, it was like camouflage and you knew deep down he’d been doing this all his life, hiding in clear sight.
I have only previously had the pleasure of Winton’s “Dirt Music”, which was a quirky romance. Thus I look forward to some of his respected work, such as “Cloudstreet” and “The Riders.” This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.
It turns out that Fintan has somehow been exiled there for something bad that he has done. Which he never explains. But as they go about as a team taking care of their survival, gathering firewood, hunting, etc., they come to trust each other while respecting each other’s secrets. Human civilization at the bare bones level, as I said elemental. Some of the songs Fintan sings feature Ned Kelley, a notorious outlaw with Robin Hood features from the 19th century. The romance of surviving beyond all the evils of the powerful monsters of the world ends when they come across the path of some bad dudes using the remote wilderness for their own nefarious activities. As Jaxie says about why he defended a rare friend in grade school from bullies:
I’m loyal, me, and not many people understand what that means. Once I’m in I’m all in. For good.
I love the resilience of this pair of social rejects and was impressed with the precise poetry of Jaxie’s vernacular. For example, here is a great sample of gumption in his inner voice about his origins:
I knew what people thought, but. Jaxie Claxton, that dirty fuckup. He was getting what he deserved. And his mum was just another budgie-brain female too stupid to save herself. The Cap they had to be nice to, to his fat face anyway… But they had him pegged. Claxtons, we were rubbish. Town like Monkton, one pub, one roadhouse, rail silo and twelve streets, half of them empty, small enough everyone heard something and they all had a fucking opinion. But no neighbor ever once came running when mum needed help. No one called the cops. Not with that great one-eyed pile of shit running amuck.
By the time he went off to high school, his experience with his father’s punishments made him fearless in the face of bullies:
Every numbnuts in the district wanted to have a go, even the Abos and fuck, they fight wild. I was never big but I was game. …Any prick wanted a blue I’d give it to him hot and hard and I wasn’t waiting round till he was ready.
Sometimes this kind of savage approach to life is just the courageous path one needs to survive. Fortunately, Jaxie has the wisdom to recognize another kind of courage in this old man in the wilderness:
I never did know what to make of Fintan MacGillis. In the end you could say I knew what kind of man he was and maybe that was the important thing. …
He was one of them geezers been out on his own so long he talks to himself all day, tells himself what he’s about to do, what he should do, what he’s forgotten to get done. He talked so much it was like a junkpile he chucked at you. …With that accent of his and the way he said things fancy and musical, it was like camouflage and you knew deep down he’d been doing this all his life, hiding in clear sight.
I have only previously had the pleasure of Winton’s “Dirt Music”, which was a quirky romance. Thus I look forward to some of his respected work, such as “Cloudstreet” and “The Riders.” This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.
August 6, 2018
I love Tim Winton's writing in the same way that I love Jane Austen's: the specificity of landscape and language that each possesses. Is that nuts? To compare Winton to Austen? Perhaps it seems a stretch, but think about it. They both wholly inhabit their vernacular, whether it's Regency England or 21st century Australia, without explanation or apology. They write of family, the small stage that is affected by world events that remain in the tangential; what matters to these writers are the dramas of the soul.
Winton has long been one of my favorite authors and it remains a perennial source of frustration that he isn't better known in the United States. Is it because we struggle to relate to what takes place beyond our borders? Is it the language, which seems quirky to our literal ears? Or perhaps Winton, like Ireland's Anne Enright, writes so raw and real, without succumbing to punch-pulling or blow-cushioning, that with our need for a feel-good aesthetic, we can't quite go their distances.
The Shepherd's Hut is a coming-of-age journey set about as far away as you can get from here: the remote reaches of Western Australia's salt lands. Jackson "Jaxie" Clackton, a teenager in a town comprised of little more than a pub and a roadhouse, discovers the body of his father underneath his ute, victim of a faulty car jack. Fearing that he would be blamed, and really, who would blame Jaxie for offing his dad after years of abuse, Jaxie hastily packs some gear, including a pair of binoculars that play a pivotal role late in the story, and sets off on foot into the surrounding wasteland. His destination is some distance north, to Lee, the girl he loves.
Winton narrates the story in Jaxie's voice, a sharp, brave, scared ramble from a young man who mourns his mother, recently deceased of cancer and a broken heart, and is terrified of becoming his father, a violent, abusive, broken drunk. His flight out of a small town that turned its face away from his and his mother's plight will change his fate, if he can just make it through the wilderness alive.
It isn't long before Jaxie is sunburnt, starving, and running critically low on water. Winton extends him a lifeline in the guise of a defrocked priest, Fintan MacGillis, living alone in a shack - the eponymous shepherd's hut. Why he is marooned is never fully explained, but MacGillis assures Jaxie that it's not for the usual reason priests are disgraced. Rather, he hints at something political, or perhaps a self-inflicted fate. With no vehicle in sight and himself to old and fat to get far on foot, the priest is supplied at Christmas and Easter, although the Christmas visit was missed this year.
The two castaways fall into a rhythm of companionship and survival, until a chance discovery threatens to destroy their desert peace.
The Shepherd's Hut is Winton distilled to crystalline brilliance. All the rawness and grace, violence and tenderness we know and admire and even love in his previous work narrows here to two characters and the wretched, fierce backdrop of an unforgiving land. It is a painful, tense story that offers hope and beauty within the most dire of straits. Highly recommended.
Winton has long been one of my favorite authors and it remains a perennial source of frustration that he isn't better known in the United States. Is it because we struggle to relate to what takes place beyond our borders? Is it the language, which seems quirky to our literal ears? Or perhaps Winton, like Ireland's Anne Enright, writes so raw and real, without succumbing to punch-pulling or blow-cushioning, that with our need for a feel-good aesthetic, we can't quite go their distances.
The Shepherd's Hut is a coming-of-age journey set about as far away as you can get from here: the remote reaches of Western Australia's salt lands. Jackson "Jaxie" Clackton, a teenager in a town comprised of little more than a pub and a roadhouse, discovers the body of his father underneath his ute, victim of a faulty car jack. Fearing that he would be blamed, and really, who would blame Jaxie for offing his dad after years of abuse, Jaxie hastily packs some gear, including a pair of binoculars that play a pivotal role late in the story, and sets off on foot into the surrounding wasteland. His destination is some distance north, to Lee, the girl he loves.
Winton narrates the story in Jaxie's voice, a sharp, brave, scared ramble from a young man who mourns his mother, recently deceased of cancer and a broken heart, and is terrified of becoming his father, a violent, abusive, broken drunk. His flight out of a small town that turned its face away from his and his mother's plight will change his fate, if he can just make it through the wilderness alive.
It isn't long before Jaxie is sunburnt, starving, and running critically low on water. Winton extends him a lifeline in the guise of a defrocked priest, Fintan MacGillis, living alone in a shack - the eponymous shepherd's hut. Why he is marooned is never fully explained, but MacGillis assures Jaxie that it's not for the usual reason priests are disgraced. Rather, he hints at something political, or perhaps a self-inflicted fate. With no vehicle in sight and himself to old and fat to get far on foot, the priest is supplied at Christmas and Easter, although the Christmas visit was missed this year.
The two castaways fall into a rhythm of companionship and survival, until a chance discovery threatens to destroy their desert peace.
The Shepherd's Hut is Winton distilled to crystalline brilliance. All the rawness and grace, violence and tenderness we know and admire and even love in his previous work narrows here to two characters and the wretched, fierce backdrop of an unforgiving land. It is a painful, tense story that offers hope and beauty within the most dire of straits. Highly recommended.
July 1, 2018
Tim Winton’s new novel hovers between a profane confession and a plea for help. A distinctly Down Under story by this most Australian writer, “The Shepherd’s Hut” is almost too painful to read, but also too plaintive to put down.
The narrator is Jaxie Clackton, a troubled teenage boy who lost his mother to cancer and suffered years of beatings from his drunken father. Jaxie has fantasized about killing his old man for so long that when he finds him dead in the garage, he panics: “They’ll say I kicked the jack out from under the roo bar and crushed his head like a pig melon,” Jaxie thinks. “It all points to me.”
Convinced he’ll be pursued by the police, Jaxie grabs a few supplies — including a gun — and runs north toward the salt lakes of Western Australia: “Pushing. Hauling. Going.” It’s not a bad plan except for the high likelihood of dying somewhere over thousands of square miles of desert, “the kind of country that’d boil your insides dry in a day.” But somehow Jaxie survives, and so what follows is a strange. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
The narrator is Jaxie Clackton, a troubled teenage boy who lost his mother to cancer and suffered years of beatings from his drunken father. Jaxie has fantasized about killing his old man for so long that when he finds him dead in the garage, he panics: “They’ll say I kicked the jack out from under the roo bar and crushed his head like a pig melon,” Jaxie thinks. “It all points to me.”
Convinced he’ll be pursued by the police, Jaxie grabs a few supplies — including a gun — and runs north toward the salt lakes of Western Australia: “Pushing. Hauling. Going.” It’s not a bad plan except for the high likelihood of dying somewhere over thousands of square miles of desert, “the kind of country that’d boil your insides dry in a day.” But somehow Jaxie survives, and so what follows is a strange. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
February 12, 2022
One of my favourite authors, but I found the young man and his narrative in some West Australian vernacular unreadable. Only made it through the first couple of chapters.
Ok, I've revisited this book now after my first attempt failed at the behest of my Canadian friend Jodi. It was an interesting story, great description of the Outback in Western Australia, but the narrative just did not work for me. Winton was trying to be clever, seems he looked for every saying ever in Aussie vernacular, the entire narrative suffered for it. There was a good story hidden in there, glad I at least finished it. Thanks Jodi.
For me a funny sentence towards the end when Jaxie is feeling frustrated with Fintan, who happens to be Irish: 'I don't know what that means, I told him. Can you say it in English?' when he has hardly said a single sentence in what I would call English in the entire book.
Ok, I've revisited this book now after my first attempt failed at the behest of my Canadian friend Jodi. It was an interesting story, great description of the Outback in Western Australia, but the narrative just did not work for me. Winton was trying to be clever, seems he looked for every saying ever in Aussie vernacular, the entire narrative suffered for it. There was a good story hidden in there, glad I at least finished it. Thanks Jodi.
For me a funny sentence towards the end when Jaxie is feeling frustrated with Fintan, who happens to be Irish: 'I don't know what that means, I told him. Can you say it in English?' when he has hardly said a single sentence in what I would call English in the entire book.
June 28, 2019
My review of this got lost when my account was deleted.
All I really need to say is "It's WINTON!" :)
All I really need to say is "It's WINTON!" :)
July 23, 2018
When I made my summer reading recommendations, I pointed out that there seems to be a "new western" genre emerging. At the time, it was female authors taking on the genre in new and interesting ways. But I think this book also merits inclusion in the category, despite its theme of toxic masculinity (words I've seen in almost every review I've read about it and every interview with the author, so not my box.)
Last year, I read this author's "landscape memoir" about Western Australia, Island Home. Nobody ever writes about this area of Australia! It is full of unique creatures, flora and fauna, and the interesting types of people who would inhabit such a place. (Coincidentally I loved that book so much that I 1)Included it on my Best Reads of 2017 list, 2) Gave my copy to my in-laws who were heading to Australia, and then felt sad and bought another copy for my self, and 3) Made Tim Winton an author I wanted to read more of in 2018.
All to say that this is a marvelous setting for a western. Jaxie Clackton is on the run after a very violent event in his home, after years of living in an abusive situation and negative environment. He ends up finding a shepherd's hut near the sand flats, after a hard journey with little water and only 'roos for food. It's a fairly quick read but all in the first-person, and in a very distinct dialect. The audiobook has a female narrator but you may listen to an excerpt to get a sense of the speech pattern and voice of Jaxie. I read the eBook but think the audio would be the way to go! For me, the character study is strong, but the landscape and actual voice really make it a stellar read.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to the title through NetGalley. It released in the United States on 19 June, 2018. I'll discuss it on Episode 127 of the Reading Envy Podcast, which will publish 28 August, 2018.
Last year, I read this author's "landscape memoir" about Western Australia, Island Home. Nobody ever writes about this area of Australia! It is full of unique creatures, flora and fauna, and the interesting types of people who would inhabit such a place. (Coincidentally I loved that book so much that I 1)Included it on my Best Reads of 2017 list, 2) Gave my copy to my in-laws who were heading to Australia, and then felt sad and bought another copy for my self, and 3) Made Tim Winton an author I wanted to read more of in 2018.
All to say that this is a marvelous setting for a western. Jaxie Clackton is on the run after a very violent event in his home, after years of living in an abusive situation and negative environment. He ends up finding a shepherd's hut near the sand flats, after a hard journey with little water and only 'roos for food. It's a fairly quick read but all in the first-person, and in a very distinct dialect. The audiobook has a female narrator but you may listen to an excerpt to get a sense of the speech pattern and voice of Jaxie. I read the eBook but think the audio would be the way to go! For me, the character study is strong, but the landscape and actual voice really make it a stellar read.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to the title through NetGalley. It released in the United States on 19 June, 2018. I'll discuss it on Episode 127 of the Reading Envy Podcast, which will publish 28 August, 2018.
August 19, 2018
Winton is a writer particularly skilled at showing the hidden emotional depths of hard men for whom sentimentality seems anathema. Reviewer Cathleen Schine described Winton as a “practitioner of what might be called the school of Macho Romanticism.” Many of his male characters are strong on the surface, conceal their feelings through silence or crude talk and refuse to divulge the emotionally complicated aspects of their past. Jaxie, the teenage protagonist of Winton’s new novel states “Our stories. We store them where moth and rust destroy.” I found Winton’s previous novel “Breath” utterly captivating in this respect for the way it describes the tentative friendship between two solitary boys and their desire to surf. “The Shepherd’s Hut” focuses on the life of another hard-edged teenage lad who is in the midst of a crisis. The novel is structured almost like a thriller opening with Jaxie gunning it down a rural road in a speeding vehicle and the novel gradually unfolds to reveal how he got to this point. He’s someone left without any support network having been slighted by his community and born in an emotionally and financially impoverished household. He refers to his abusive father as “Captain Wankbag” and after a shocking accident, Jaxie is left to fend for himself in the Australian wilderness. His journey and the connection he makes with a reclusive hermit is a sobering take on the erosive effects of solitude, but also the ultimate tenacity of the human spirit.
Read my full review of The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton on LonesomeReader
December 15, 2020
Daha önce Dönüş isimli öykü kitabını okumuş ve çok beğenmiştim. Winton’un özellikle Cloudstreet, Breath ve Dirt Music isimli kitapları çok okunuyor ve tavsiye ediliyor yayınlandığı ülkelerde. Esasında bunlardan birini beklerken son romanı Çoban Kulübesi yayınlandı.
Öykülerde olduğu gibi bu romanda da sert bir anlatım söz konusu. Lafını hiç esirgemiyor. Kimi yerlerde artık avlanan hayvanların kanının - etinin kokusu adeta okurken burnuma geldi. Fiziki şiddet, en ufak bir yumuşatma, hafifletme etkisi olmadan bir fotoğraf gibi verilmiş. Romandaki kişiler -oldukça az sayıda karakter var- birbirlerine karşı son derece acımasız, sert. Sanki herkes birbirinden nefret ediyor gibi -esasında birçoğu da öyle zaten. O yaşta bir çocuğun (ana karakterimiz - Jaxie) gerçek hayatta romanda anlatıldığı şekilde hayatta kalabilmesi ne kadar mümkündür bilmiyorum, okurken bu sorgulanabilir belki.
Kitap, Jaxie’nin davranışları ve savunma mekanizmaları hakkında okuru düşünmeye zorlayabilir. Bu açıdan bakıldığında Jaxie’nin yıllar boyunca istismar edilmiş, şiddet görmüş bir çocuk olduğu, aile içerisinde ona yardım eli uzatacak kimsenin olmadığı bir çocukluk yaşadığı göz önüne alınarak okunursa anlatıdaki birçok şeyi anlamlandırmak daha kolay olacaktır düşüncesindeyim.
July 31, 2018
Tim Winton is basically a genius. I can’t believe it took me so long to start reading this novel, or to finish it once I started. The Shepherd’s Hut is an exceptional, thorough, and critical study of toxic masculinity culture. Jaxie Clackton is a vivid antihero- an unforgettable Australian voice; a voice that speaks for generations of young men, brought up in tough places and tough times, and for whom adults have been found wanting. This too, is a novel of Australia, Winton writes with precision and awe, bringing to life the unforgiving landscape, which is central to our ability to find ourselves. This is a most exceptional novel.
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