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Land's Edge
On childhood holidays to the beach the sun and surf kept Tim Winton outside in the mornings, in the water; the wind would drive him indoors in the afternoons, to books and reading. This ebb and flow of the day became a way of life.
In this beautifully delicate memoir, Tim Winton writes about his obsession with what happens where the water meets the shore – about diving, dunes, beachcombing – and the sense of being on the precarious, wondrous edge of things that haunts his novels.
Complemented by the breathtaking photographs of Narelle Autio, Land's Edge is a celebration of the coastal life and those who surrender themselves to it.
In this beautifully delicate memoir, Tim Winton writes about his obsession with what happens where the water meets the shore – about diving, dunes, beachcombing – and the sense of being on the precarious, wondrous edge of things that haunts his novels.
Complemented by the breathtaking photographs of Narelle Autio, Land's Edge is a celebration of the coastal life and those who surrender themselves to it.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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713 people want to read
About the author
Tim Winton
76 books2,367 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 121 reviews
May 27, 2016
There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea.
This brief memoir-essay was pressed on me by my mother, with the unpromising comment that all her friends had disliked it but that it captured her own idea of what Australia means. My parents moved there ten years ago, but this is what home is to them now: standing on wet sand in the sun with a vast landmass at their backs and the sea stretching out in front. That's when they know they're home. That little interzone between the land and the ocean is, for Tim Winton too, the quintessence of being Australian and the quintessence, also, of being a writer, exploring the edges and the margins.
A critic once called me a ‘literalist’, which delighted me. For, despite his faulty spelling, he got me right; I am a ‘littoralist’, someone who picks over things at the edges.
Australia is a gargantuan country, and most of it is uninhabitable; squint a little, and you have the impression of a narrow band of humans clinging on to the edges of an unwelcoming continent. Drive a couple of hours inland, and it's like going back in time – suddenly it's all wooden signs, dusty main streets, tottering watertowers and leathery men sinking schooners in the Town & Country. Civilisation peters out away from the coast: and the beach looms correspondingly large in Australian consciousness. This is, Winton says,
where we test and prove our physical prowess, where we discover sex; it is often the site of our adulterous assignations, and where we go to face our grown-up failures. In the end, it is where we retire in the sun to await the unknown.
Land's Edge is a dreamy, nostalgic memoir told in a smooth Australian English that's full of muttonfish, jarrah, Hills hoists, mulloways and Patterson's curse. It's really too short to reach any profound conclusions about coastal mentality, and it's disappointingly light on Winton's own creative process or writing life – but for anyone looking for a burst of distilled Aussie contemplation, this goes down very smoothly. Thanks Mum.
February 23, 2018
Sharks, surfing, sunburn and tinned beetroot. Tim Winton's ocean memoir Land's Edge is so quintesentially Aussie it almost brought a patriotical tear to my eye.
As someone who has never lived more than 20 minutes from the closest beach, this short book was wonderfully nostalgic and incredibly relatable for me. I wanted to post at least one of the beautiful quotes in this review however the entire book is basically one big, beautiful quote.
A super quick read, I highly recommend this for any Aussie wanting to sit back and reflect on our beautiful coast lines.
As someone who has never lived more than 20 minutes from the closest beach, this short book was wonderfully nostalgic and incredibly relatable for me. I wanted to post at least one of the beautiful quotes in this review however the entire book is basically one big, beautiful quote.
A super quick read, I highly recommend this for any Aussie wanting to sit back and reflect on our beautiful coast lines.
April 4, 2021
A delightful memoir of those moments by the sea with literary references to novels Tim Winton has read. Erudite as ever. A short audiobook with perfect narration, one I think I could listen to over and over.
May 5, 2023
3.5 stars. A short memoir focussing on the author’s obsession with being near ocean water. He grew up in suburbia and recalls childhood holidays at the beach. In his teens his family moved to a coastal town in Western Australia. He writes about spending the mornings in the water. By the afternoon the wind would drive him indoors to books and reading. As a young boy he was foolhardy in his diving exploits, sometimes finding himself swimming near sharks. He went fishing with his father regularly and describes a couple of near drownings.
Tim Winton fans should find this very short memoir, (112 pages), an interesting, worthwhile reading experience.
This book was first published in 2017.
Tim Winton fans should find this very short memoir, (112 pages), an interesting, worthwhile reading experience.
This book was first published in 2017.
April 16, 2024
'In sight of the sea I felt as though I had all my fingers and toes.' And here beginneth the lesson.
If you enjoy lucid exquisite prose, and/or you enjoy luxuriating in landscape, this little gem of a book is for you. Winton is famous for his prose depicting landscape and the relationships of his characters through their natural environment in his juicy and often dark novels. Here, he is kicking back into memoir, recounting his love and passion and what drives him to enjoy life; his 'split-shift' life as he calls it, mornings roaming the coastline, and once the Freemantle Doctor has come in, afternoons reading and working, 'fiddling away at interior things' as he modestly puts it.
I could go on (and ON), but I'll save it for my review of Island Home, which I'm grateful to have as a more substantial follow up to this pearl of a book. Tim, you're a national treasure; a prophet of the word. Love ya guts.
If you enjoy lucid exquisite prose, and/or you enjoy luxuriating in landscape, this little gem of a book is for you. Winton is famous for his prose depicting landscape and the relationships of his characters through their natural environment in his juicy and often dark novels. Here, he is kicking back into memoir, recounting his love and passion and what drives him to enjoy life; his 'split-shift' life as he calls it, mornings roaming the coastline, and once the Freemantle Doctor has come in, afternoons reading and working, 'fiddling away at interior things' as he modestly puts it.
I could go on (and ON), but I'll save it for my review of Island Home, which I'm grateful to have as a more substantial follow up to this pearl of a book. Tim, you're a national treasure; a prophet of the word. Love ya guts.
January 3, 2019
This is a drifting, somewhat magical little memoir in which Tim Winton swirls memories for Australian childhood (mostly coastal in orientation), with more recent expediencies and a a nice palate of marine photography.
The evocative, beautiful rich writing makes this at times soothing to read, but at other times there is an immanent sense of urgency at what we are losing, at the land that is slipping between our fingers as we negligently fail to see the jewel we are holding.
Loved the literary, lyric quality to the writing. Would recommend to all and sundry.
The last book I started in and the first one I finished in 2019, this was a lovely reading experience. No one quite captures the Australian coast like this author does. "Never turn our back on the sea, my father told me when we fished the rocks..." [pg 82]
The evocative, beautiful rich writing makes this at times soothing to read, but at other times there is an immanent sense of urgency at what we are losing, at the land that is slipping between our fingers as we negligently fail to see the jewel we are holding.
Loved the literary, lyric quality to the writing. Would recommend to all and sundry.
The last book I started in and the first one I finished in 2019, this was a lovely reading experience. No one quite captures the Australian coast like this author does. "Never turn our back on the sea, my father told me when we fished the rocks..." [pg 82]
October 14, 2012
A poetic and ethereal book about a man's relationship with the sea
November 28, 2017
If a genie suddenly appeared in my life and granted me one wish (and I couldn’t choose world peace or the demolition of poverty) then my wish would be to write like Tim Winton. What a master he is!
I picked up this slim memoir for $1.00 at a school fair recently and it will go down as one of the best-spent dollars of my life.
Born in 1960, it is look at Winton’s life growing up as a child on the coast of Western Australia. My time and my stomping ground; it made me laugh and it made me cry. I had to read out passages aloud just to share the joy of Winton’s words.
But even if you are not from the area, Winton’s view of Australians as veranda dwellers will have you chuckling; you will appreciate a child’s delight in the discovery of reading and books while escaping from the afternoon summer heat; a child’s horror at watching whales being slaughtered; a child’s simple joy at fishing with his father; and a man’s ability to breath again arriving back from overseas to his home by the sea.
The book has the added bonus of stunning photographs by Narelle Autio.
Here is wonderful passage from page 37.
We are not sea people by way of being great mariners, but more a coastal people, content on the edge of things. We live by the sea not simply because it is more pleasant to a lazy nation, but because of the two mysteries (ocean and desert), the sea is more forthcoming...The innate human feeling from the veranda is that if you look out to sea long enough, something will turn up. We are a race of veranda dwellers…
I can’t recommend this book enough.
I picked up this slim memoir for $1.00 at a school fair recently and it will go down as one of the best-spent dollars of my life.
Born in 1960, it is look at Winton’s life growing up as a child on the coast of Western Australia. My time and my stomping ground; it made me laugh and it made me cry. I had to read out passages aloud just to share the joy of Winton’s words.
But even if you are not from the area, Winton’s view of Australians as veranda dwellers will have you chuckling; you will appreciate a child’s delight in the discovery of reading and books while escaping from the afternoon summer heat; a child’s horror at watching whales being slaughtered; a child’s simple joy at fishing with his father; and a man’s ability to breath again arriving back from overseas to his home by the sea.
The book has the added bonus of stunning photographs by Narelle Autio.
Here is wonderful passage from page 37.
We are not sea people by way of being great mariners, but more a coastal people, content on the edge of things. We live by the sea not simply because it is more pleasant to a lazy nation, but because of the two mysteries (ocean and desert), the sea is more forthcoming...The innate human feeling from the veranda is that if you look out to sea long enough, something will turn up. We are a race of veranda dwellers…
I can’t recommend this book enough.
February 27, 2024
Tim Winton could write a shopping list and it would be a great read. Land's Edge was a fantastic one-day treat.
I felt I should have been sitting on a verandah on a weatherbeaten house on a wild coast to truly do this reading justice.
In presentation, this is a wonderful book. Small (just over 100 pages, well-spaced) hard covered and with each chapter divided by a stand out photograph if the sea/coast/it's inhabitants.
Written in seven chapters, each is like a short story in itself. Each chapter begins with a Winton-esque story (in a beautiful dark blue text) followed by a memoir related to the initial story, which was also a memoir.
Tim Winton is such a master writer and this small book - a love letter to the sea - was truly special.
His descriptive language has a true lightness in it's reading - like the best, most complex classic scores do; it is romantic in the true meaning of the word and immersed me from the first page with excellent storytelling.
A hint - at my local bookshop it took a good half hour to find this book because it wasn't in the biography section where it should have been. I found it in Travel.
I felt I should have been sitting on a verandah on a weatherbeaten house on a wild coast to truly do this reading justice.
In presentation, this is a wonderful book. Small (just over 100 pages, well-spaced) hard covered and with each chapter divided by a stand out photograph if the sea/coast/it's inhabitants.
Written in seven chapters, each is like a short story in itself. Each chapter begins with a Winton-esque story (in a beautiful dark blue text) followed by a memoir related to the initial story, which was also a memoir.
Tim Winton is such a master writer and this small book - a love letter to the sea - was truly special.
His descriptive language has a true lightness in it's reading - like the best, most complex classic scores do; it is romantic in the true meaning of the word and immersed me from the first page with excellent storytelling.
A hint - at my local bookshop it took a good half hour to find this book because it wasn't in the biography section where it should have been. I found it in Travel.
April 28, 2013
Every time I read a Winton book I am amazed. The man's talent is boundless. He has a uniquely Australian voice without sounding overdone or ocker - a mature voice which retains the simplicity and straight forwardness of Australia. And in Land's Edge, he writes part of my childhood. The duality of suburb and coast, where coast makes you more alive, feel more, brighter colours and days that go too fast.
Another review I read described this book as a love letter to the sea, which is a perfect description. At just over 100 pages, it's a quick read, but once again Winton's prose is pure poetry. In chapter three there is a passage about swimming with sharks which had me enthralled - not a terrifying, heart stopping, over dramatic description, but one of wonder and awe that these creatures should fill us with.
Like Tim Winton, I am lucky enough to live close enough to the sea to experience it every day, and like him, it feeds my soul, soothes me and touches me daily. His description of Australians relationship with the sea is spot on.
Winton is definitely on my list of people I'd love to invite to a dinner party.
Another review I read described this book as a love letter to the sea, which is a perfect description. At just over 100 pages, it's a quick read, but once again Winton's prose is pure poetry. In chapter three there is a passage about swimming with sharks which had me enthralled - not a terrifying, heart stopping, over dramatic description, but one of wonder and awe that these creatures should fill us with.
Like Tim Winton, I am lucky enough to live close enough to the sea to experience it every day, and like him, it feeds my soul, soothes me and touches me daily. His description of Australians relationship with the sea is spot on.
Winton is definitely on my list of people I'd love to invite to a dinner party.
September 9, 2014
Land's EdgeTim Winton is said to be one of Australia’s best-loved novelists, and he has won countless awards, most notably the Miles Franklin four times. If you’ve read my review of Breath you’ll know that I’m not an enthusiast, but I have to say that Land’s Edge, A Coastal Memoir, a little book of only 100-odd pages that I stumbled on at the library last week, has some exquisite writing.
The Sydney Morning Herald on the dust-jacket calls it a ‘love letter to the beach’ – and that’s not my favourite place to be, so I nearly put it back on the shelves. But I flicked through the pages anyway, and I found this somewhat provocative statement:
Western Australians are great trashers and thrashers – it’s a proud tradition and one we’re always threatening to defend by seceding from the rest of the country. A state of small people with big bulldozers. But now and then even we see something that causes us to back off and think before we shoot; little blessings and miracles get through. (p. 36)
Intrigued, I took Land’s Edge home and read it …
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/05/14/la...
The Sydney Morning Herald on the dust-jacket calls it a ‘love letter to the beach’ – and that’s not my favourite place to be, so I nearly put it back on the shelves. But I flicked through the pages anyway, and I found this somewhat provocative statement:
Western Australians are great trashers and thrashers – it’s a proud tradition and one we’re always threatening to defend by seceding from the rest of the country. A state of small people with big bulldozers. But now and then even we see something that causes us to back off and think before we shoot; little blessings and miracles get through. (p. 36)
Intrigued, I took Land’s Edge home and read it …
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2013/05/14/la...
June 19, 2011
Land's Edge is a memoir of Tim Winton's life in WA, living on the coast, first as a child, then as an adult, and his life long love of the sea comes through in the majority of his books. There are some beautiful photos in the last half of the book, of glorious scenes, also of friends and family members. It's a very interesting tale of different things that happened to him when he was young, which defined why he started writing...worth a read.
June 7, 2023
Tim Winton really knows how to write a bloody book doesn't he. Fiction or non fiction - a quick read and perfect for reading on the side of the ocean.
February 24, 2017
From BBC radio 4 - Book of the week:
Acclaimed Australian author, Tim Winton, recalls childhood memories of Christmas holidays in a shack at the beach, the coastal summer idyll and how his relationship with the sea has shaped his adult life.
Read by Stephen Dillane
Abridged and produced by Gaynor Macfarlane.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dhhpj
Acclaimed Australian author, Tim Winton, recalls childhood memories of Christmas holidays in a shack at the beach, the coastal summer idyll and how his relationship with the sea has shaped his adult life.
Read by Stephen Dillane
Abridged and produced by Gaynor Macfarlane.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01dhhpj
August 31, 2013
Confirmed why I have such a crush on Tim Winton. As a South African, I connected with so many things about my own childhood and our holidays at the sea. This was my favourite paragraph: "On rare and dreaded family slide nights, I am shocked to see myself in a glistening yellow raincoat. It was never winter when I was a kid! I never looked so pale! I have to strain to recognize myself in Hush Puppies and a mohair turtleneck, ready for Sunday School with my brother, who is about to bawl. Because in my memory of childhood there is always the smell of bubbling tar, of Pinke Zinke, the briny smell of the sea. It is always summer and I am on Scarborough Beach, blinded by light, with my shirt off and my back a map of dried salt and peeling sunburn. There are waves cracking on the sandbar and the rip flags are up. My mum, brown as a planed piece of jarrah, is reading a novel by John O'Hara with cleavage on the cover and someone is spraying coconut oil on the bodies of girls in wide-side bikinis. Out there is west, true west. The sea is where the sun goes at the end of the day, where it lives while you sleep. I have a fix on things when I know where west is."
November 28, 2014
On of my top 5 ever books. Tim Winton speaks of and about the ocean and coast with such love and awe. So many childhood memories are brought back into clear focus c/- this writer. Strong tinge of melancholy in all his works, but that does seem to be the result of being a master of observation. I have not read any better author of oceanic tales than Tim Winton.
January 17, 2021
Listen to this book as an audio, it was such an enjoyable way to spend a drive. The descriptions were poetic, fresh and familiar, capturing the beauty and allure of the coast. Even one not so well acquainted with the lifestyle felt drawn into the authors childhood memories as if they were ones own.
It sometimes felt the space of musings between the vivid scenes and stories were too long and distracting, but it did work to pace out the story.
Overall it was an enjoyable memoir of those childhood moments and landscapes that shape you, and never quite leave you.
It sometimes felt the space of musings between the vivid scenes and stories were too long and distracting, but it did work to pace out the story.
Overall it was an enjoyable memoir of those childhood moments and landscapes that shape you, and never quite leave you.
July 13, 2024
3.5 Stars!
“I would never be content with only one world or the other. At the time it felt like the ideal life, that coastal summer idyll, and maybe I’ve lived all my years a hostage to a six year old’s fantasy.”
Winton conjures of some, lovely warm and colourful imagery in this brief, but at times quite profound account of some of his memories and experiences of living and playing on the edges of Australia's wild and inviting West Coast.
“Australians are surrounded by ocean and ambushed from behind by desert – a war of mystery on two fronts.”
August 28, 2018
This is a book about the sea's edge mainly in Western Australia where Tim Winton has lived most if not all of his life. It is a slim volume and a light weight read but I loved it especially the description of beachcombing at the end. I still think 'Breath' is the best Tim Winton book I have read. This one contains so many of his own vivid memories used in 'Breath'.
January 11, 2025
“The veranda is an interval space, where life is improvised. The beach in Australia, is the landscape equivalent of a veranda, a veranda at the edge of a continent.”
What a spectacular ode to the Aussie coastline, so brilliantly capturing the draw to the wild a rough coast, where waves tower overhead crashing on each beach and sharks circle its depths and yet we always come back for more.
What a spectacular ode to the Aussie coastline, so brilliantly capturing the draw to the wild a rough coast, where waves tower overhead crashing on each beach and sharks circle its depths and yet we always come back for more.
September 4, 2025
A coastal Memoir
An excellent, clear, informative, lyrical memoir of Tim Winston’s relationship with the sea and coastal places in Western Australia whenever he began life & after various journeys to other parts of Australia and the world he has returned.
I enjoyed this memoir very much.
An excellent, clear, informative, lyrical memoir of Tim Winston’s relationship with the sea and coastal places in Western Australia whenever he began life & after various journeys to other parts of Australia and the world he has returned.
I enjoyed this memoir very much.
December 29, 2019
Loved it; can't wait to buy my own copy. For full review please go to http://thebooksmithblog.wordpress.com
February 6, 2023
Some lovely images, but otherwise just. Okay.
October 4, 2024
I'm not usually one for non fiction, but Winton's short memoir reads more like his typical fiction anyway. After reading his first novel 'an open swimmer' and his collection of short stories 'the turning', I enjoyed this insight into his life and seeing how heavily he leans on his upbringing and stories from his childhood for those two works especially.
November 30, 2020
It was a pleasure to drift along the current of Tim’s memories of childhood and the WA coastline. Anyone who grew up in WA can relate to these images and everyone else can see what they missed.
May 9, 2014
Some are city people; some, countryside; others need to be within the sound and smell of the sea. Tim Winton belongs to the sea-siders.
In “Land’s Edge - A Coastal Memoir”, he writes of childish summer days by the ocean in Western Australia: days which created a sense of belonging that outweighed the schooldays in suburbia and the early adult years in the inner city. Who he is now; where he lives and how he spends his working days can all be traced back to a “house that smells of cactus and dusty and musty kapok” on the coast north of Perth. In that house - a shack with a library - he lived days divided between swimming, fishing, rowing and a world imagined in the pages of books.
As a child he witnessed the slaughter of a whale; as he grew up, he encountered the drifters and dropouts who survived on the fringe of land that acted as sentry between the salt water and the human habitat. His is no dream of escape. Rather it is an acknowledgment of belonging. Here, he cannot forget that death may be a storm ahead, a breaker away.
The style is poetic. Although I found the first two or three pages rather laboured I went on to enjoy his prose. The pages are laden with Australian words which sent me to my biggest dictionary. Mostly these are the names of indigenous plants or animals.
This is a short book, which allows the text to be double-spaced and full-margined. There is a black and white illustration for each chapter. An elegant volume.
QUOTES
“Maybe I’ve lived all my years a hostage to a six-year-old’s fantasy.”
“When I went to browse in that library someone would have to throw a beach towel over the stuffed eagle in the corner.”
In “Land’s Edge - A Coastal Memoir”, he writes of childish summer days by the ocean in Western Australia: days which created a sense of belonging that outweighed the schooldays in suburbia and the early adult years in the inner city. Who he is now; where he lives and how he spends his working days can all be traced back to a “house that smells of cactus and dusty and musty kapok” on the coast north of Perth. In that house - a shack with a library - he lived days divided between swimming, fishing, rowing and a world imagined in the pages of books.
As a child he witnessed the slaughter of a whale; as he grew up, he encountered the drifters and dropouts who survived on the fringe of land that acted as sentry between the salt water and the human habitat. His is no dream of escape. Rather it is an acknowledgment of belonging. Here, he cannot forget that death may be a storm ahead, a breaker away.
The style is poetic. Although I found the first two or three pages rather laboured I went on to enjoy his prose. The pages are laden with Australian words which sent me to my biggest dictionary. Mostly these are the names of indigenous plants or animals.
This is a short book, which allows the text to be double-spaced and full-margined. There is a black and white illustration for each chapter. An elegant volume.
QUOTES
“Maybe I’ve lived all my years a hostage to a six-year-old’s fantasy.”
“When I went to browse in that library someone would have to throw a beach towel over the stuffed eagle in the corner.”
August 2, 2018
Just a short story as such from Tim Winton, but an indulgence just the same.
His words visualise in my mind the West Coast of Australia in which I have not seen enough of, and probably never will (being an East Coast lizard).
The sea can do wonders to sooth your soul, help you focus and also relax at the same time. I have seen some of the West Coast from land and from the sea itself and it is amazing!
I would love to explore more of the inlets, beaches without footprints and shacks that Tim describes in this book. It is on my wish list to visit more of this coast line and enjoy the serenity which it provides.
His words visualise in my mind the West Coast of Australia in which I have not seen enough of, and probably never will (being an East Coast lizard).
The sea can do wonders to sooth your soul, help you focus and also relax at the same time. I have seen some of the West Coast from land and from the sea itself and it is amazing!
I would love to explore more of the inlets, beaches without footprints and shacks that Tim describes in this book. It is on my wish list to visit more of this coast line and enjoy the serenity which it provides.
October 6, 2015
A beautiful memoir on growing up with the sea. Tim Winton's language and voice are as strong, or stronger, in his own reflections on his childhood. I can see how vividly his experiences have influenced his fiction and how remarkable his ability is to capture the desert and the ocean as dynamic beings.
July 12, 2024
I listened to the audiobook version of this book.
It was okay. The descriptive language is beautiful, but it doesn't really have much of a story to be honest. I'm glad it was only short, otherwise I might not have finished it.
It was okay. The descriptive language is beautiful, but it doesn't really have much of a story to be honest. I'm glad it was only short, otherwise I might not have finished it.
March 23, 2012
Not my kind of read
Displaying 1 - 30 of 121 reviews