The Readers Guide

Why the book produces this mood is its own question, but again a positive I draw from the read. To finish thoughts on Larsson, that series is inextricably set in Sweden, while The Shepherd’s Hut is so grounded in its geographical setting, that it’s hard to imagine displacing it elsewhere. Both page-turners, both well written, both have setting loom large over the characters, mood and action (and at times in The Sheperd’s Hut, lack thereof).

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What catches me just now is how the novel is staying with me still, and how it seems to share traits like this with very different but also very good reads. It’s my 3rd Tim Winton read. Cloudstreet is a genuine Australian epic and classic, for reason. Loved it. More to say, but off-topic here. The Riders had some great writing and a great premise, but I need to read it again, as for some reason it lost me somewhere along the way in terms of belief and investment. But Winton is such a caring and immersive writer, I picked this up to try him again after a few years.

 

So, for the book itself. The book utilises the mechanism of a few short-burst pages of where the story ends, employed at the start. I’m sure there’s a proper name for this, but not chasing that up just now. But it begins with Jaxie, behind the wheel of a car, bursting out of the bush, onto the bitumen, onto the open road. Up and out and away from the last few months of his life in the rugged empty, off-map wilderness which will be the story to come. He enters full of life, ‘laughing hard enough to choke,’ with direction and purpose he’s not experienced before. A spoiler for ending in a way, but not in the slightest as to what got him there.

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Three pages in, it has it’s second start, that which is the chronological start of the few months constituting the short timespan in which the story is set. Short, but momentous and pivotal - and yet also by way of contrast, where most of the time is filled with a whole lot of nothing. Survival, reflection, sorting his head out, but where days would bleed one into another without change, again itself a theme for the setting, and for him and the rare few other characters to consider. When things do happen though, they can be explosive, powerful, and a combination of brutal and/ or beautiful. The word raw seems apt here, again for both character and place, but also for the nature of the stripped back, visually immersive writing itself.

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A case in point. When this second-start happens, it’s one of the most viscerally, brutally arresting starts to a character’s journey I’ve seen start a novel. Beaten unconscious by his dad, Jaxie awakes in the bones and scraps bin of his dad’s butcher’s shop. Screaming heat, massive shiner of a black eye welting across his face, covered in flies and blood and stench, and first thoughts: that he’s gotta get gone, finally, and to emerge quietly lest his dad hears him and starts in again.

From here he hides until later in the night when he figures his dad would have blacked out from drinking, the fact emerging quickly and the details emerging slowly that his mum had died a couple of years before, so its just the two of them. Small town, no real friends, no support, no voice, and thoughts to heading away up north, where there is one person in his life to hold onto. And after events I’ll not spoil, the story is of him deciding to run from the bad to that one good point of light. To struggle and to try.

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From the get-go, Jaxie comes fully formed as a character and a voice. Somewhere vaguely around 17 years old, he’s conversely lived a tightly probative life in a small country town, while drawing on a wealth of experience and energy and emotion and conviction to allow his tenacious will a thread to hang upon. When a pivotal event happens, he runs, ill-prepared, hiding away from the road and accusations and reprisal, into the desert, aiming for that one person he trusts. Luck, some skill and lots of determination see him arrive at a deserted miner’s camp where he holds up enough time to assess and recalibrate. When he realises he’s in need of further supplies, he traipses across a salt lake to get enough salt to stop food from spoiling, and in this process comes across the titular Shepherd’s Hut, and it’s inhabitant. Enter an old man, Fintan, hiding and being hid from the world, his own history he’s equally unwilling to share. They slowly form a bond, in some ways cathartic but also often easily sparking against raw wounds not yet healed for Jaxie. There’s only two other characters he meets, but shall leave that in spoilers territory.

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Written in the first person, it’s a strongly Australian voice and dialect. I very much enjoyed how powerful and distinct his character voice was, while simultaneously wondering how it would be to read this with English as a second language. Once embedded in his voice and his world, however, the immersive nature, the turn of phrase, the richness of expression, hopefully all would alleviate any discomfort for those looking for things like proper grammar and form. The strength of the voice carries across such fusses.

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The action is chronological, as is the quiet stop desert time lack of action over these few months. This time though provides time for Jaxie to reflect, and let his backstory emerge in memory snippets, again in his unique voice, and also in that contrast combination of captured teen thoughts wired through with strong conviction, experience and some decent wisdom in there for good measure.

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There’s more to be said. What he’s seen and felt, the backstory he’s fighting out of, how clean and clear those moments of clarity that keep him on track. Mostly though the review boils down to it being a beautifully raw, immersive, harsh, compelling book. I’m a fan of Tim Winton, and this is a good reason why.

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Jaxie and his voice will very likely be added to characters that come to mind on repeat over a number of years to come. I’m happy with that.

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- Chris O’Malley

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Book review for “The Shepherd’s Hut,” by Tim Winton – ISBN: 978014379490