Tim Winton - The Shepherd's Hut

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstandingly good

I thought that The Shepherd's Hut was quite outstanding. 

The story is narrated by Jaxie Clackton, a rough, rebellious adolescent in a small, isolated town in Western Australia.  He is regularly viciously beaten by his father until Jaxie returns home one day to find him dead.  Fearing that his own tough reputation and the way his father treated him will lead people to suspect him of the killing, he takes off into the bush on foot, heading toward the girl he loves who is many hundreds of miles away.  We get the story of Jaxie's hard journey and troubles and of his meeting with an odd, isolated old man in a shepherds hut in the middle of nowhere.

It may not sound that alluring, but it's absolutely terrific.  Jaxie's narrative voice is brilliantly done (be warned that the language is appropriate to a very rough teenage boy!), the sense of place in the deserted saltlands of Western Australia is phenomenally evocative and I found the story utterly gripping.  It has quietly perceptive things to say about men, resilience, pig-headedness, love and many other things and it will stay with me for a very long time.

I loved everything about this book, including Jaxie's colourful language (of an almost dead phone, for example: "By now there probably wasn't a bee's pube of battery left anyway.") and the genuine humanity and understanding among the harshness and brutality.  As a couple of examples: "Son, I used to scoff at all the notions people got about the sun and moon.  Primitive people, I mean.  With all their worshipping and fearing.  But the longer I'm out here.  Well, it knocks the scoffing out of a fella."  Or Jaxie's adolescent realisation that, "It's a dangerous feeling getting noticed, being wanted.  Getting seen deep and proper…"  And I especially loved the way some things weren't neatly tied up but left unknown as they so often are in life, and that the book ends on a note of hope and aspiration rather than resolution, because that's the real point of the story.

The Shepherd's Hut is one of the best, most involving books I've read this year.  I'd be delighted to see it nominated for the Man Booker (although it may be too readable for that) and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Picador for an ARC via NetGalley.)