The Shepherd's Hut is an exquisite, brutal coming of age novel. It tells the story of Jaxie, a boy on the run from his past, and explores the way love and hate combine to form a young man's beliefs.
Tim Winton has published over twenty books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). Active in the environmental movement, he is the Patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society. He lives in Western Australia.
It may be that this is his best book yet . . . triumphantly good .
. . blisteringly original
*The Times*
A page-turning heartbreaker
*Emma Donoghue, author of Room*
Outstanding . . . compulsively suspenseful . . . dazzlingly
good
*Sunday Times*
Exhilarating, compelling . . . elegiac, transcendent
*Guardian*
Wonderful. Brutal, agonizing, tender
*Sarah Winman, author of When God Was a Rabbit and Tin
Man*
Raw, brutal and merciless . . . Holden Caulfield, you have been
eclipsed
*Spectator*
Remarkable . . . astonishing . . . extraordinary . . . Winton has
written a novel which - and I can have no higher praise - I wish to
re-read . . . it is clever, canny and complex
*Scotland on Sunday*
Winton’s novel is layered, lyrical and intense . . . unforgettable
. . . heartstopping
*Mail on Sunday*
A transfixing performance
*Philip Hensher, Books of the Year, Spectator*
A master novelist at the very peak of their craft. Full of heart
and life and beauty
*Evie Wyld, author of All The Birds, Singing*
A novel that reminds us what fiction can do. Here is a voice that
digs into your viscera and changes you from the inside
*Ross Raisin, author of God's Own Country*
Searing, ardent and deeply empathetic . . . Jaxie Clackton,
plangent and profane, is destined to become one of the greatest
characters in Australian literature
*Geraldine Brooks, author of Year of Wonders*
Superb. It's rare to feel fury and hope on the surface of the skin
at the same time, and more rare to find that convincing in a
story
*Cynan Jones, author of Cove*
A fierce, pungent, slangy, humdinger of a book, with a real kick in
the tail. Fiction doesn't get much better than this
*Rupert Thomson, author of Divided Kingdom*
Landscape and destiny are inextricable in Tim Winton’s latest
novel, and the result is a gritty realism that ultimately propels
the story into the timelessness of a parable. All that I love about
Winton’s work is here: the poetry of the colloquial, fully realized
characters, and the fearlessness to enter the deepest mysteries of
being. The Shepherd’s Hut is a brilliant reminder that Winton is
one of the world’s great living novelists.
*Ron Rash, author of Serena*
Winton is, as always, a superb painter of Australian space. He
takes this drear landscape and invests it with what can only be
described as majesty . . . Winton's achievement in these pages is
of a piece with his larger fictional project. He seeks to
re-enchant the world, and to provide, via the essentially sceptical
machinery of literature, a sense of secular communion. A novel is
not a church, and Winton is not a preacher. But he is a voice of
sanity and his art is tuned to the possibility of care, even
grace
*Australian*
Tim Winton’s Jaxie Clackton brings to mind the voices of other
great survivors in literature, such as Huckleberry Finn and Oliver
Twist, who struggle against impossible odds with pluck, common
sense, and a refreshingly keen command of the vernacular. Once you
start reading this book, you won’t want to put it down. A powerful,
most compelling story
*Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane*
A richly compassionate work, deeply informed by Winton’s poetic
genius
*Alex Miller, author of Journey to the Stone Country *
Shot through with the breathtaking evocation of landscape that is
Winton’s forte, The Shepherd’s Hut is a hymn to the wild forces of
nature and unsentimental belonging. Winton’s enviable ability to
elicit passion for Jaxie through his immaculate, poetic and
troubled rush of vernacular—no matter how terrible Jaxie’s
actions—is broken, beautiful and ugly in all the best ways.
*Ray Robinson, author of Electricity*
A masterpiece from a masterful storyteller. We have not seen many
people like Jaxie in Australian literature. When reading this book
I wondered if Winton had actually found someone like Jaxie and had
simply recorded him telling his incredible story. This is the magic
of this book. The voice is so authentic and the language of this
young character rings true to the people I have met throughout my
life. I will not forget this book
*Alexis Wright, author of Carpentaria *
Describes the chaotic struggle of new masculinity better than
anything else I’ve read. As an exploration of the intergenerational
trauma that plagues men, it couldn’t be more timely. Seriously,
it’s incredible
*Ben Quilty*
A voice that shaves to the bone and then keeps going.
Wonderful.
*Alan McMonagle, author of Ithaca*
A tour de force . . . what makes this lonely romp so technically
impressive is that Winton manages to maintain the tension, while
Jaxie's musings are punctuated with flashes of demotic poetry . . .
The book's conclusion, looping back to its opening, is beautifully
poised. 'Change is slow and hope is violent' reads the epigraph to
The Shepherd's Hut. It certainly turns out to be so in this novel.
But there is hope none the less, not just for Jaxie but for some
kind of understanding and empathy across generations, and for that
Winton makes us very grateful.
*Literary Review*
Exploring ideas of masculinity, exile and hope, The Shepherd's Hut
is a wise and compassionate novel, demonstrating Winton’s deep
engagement with issues of moral complexity
*Observer*
A distinctly Down Under story by this most Australian writer . . .
Winton still remains in Western Australia, where he was born, and
that long experience with the place and the language is baked deep
into his prose . . . here’s survivalist fiction at its rawest from
a novelist who sometimes sounds as bleak as our own Cormac McCarthy
. . . But this tale of tooth and claw is deepened by Jaxie’s
abiding dignity. Fear of capture isn’t really pushing him across
these hundreds of miles so much as his determination to reach a
young woman he loves
*Washington Post*
Clackton is an absolutely wonderful creation, with . . . a voice as
hardscrabble and jagged as the bush itself . . . an uncompromising
novel that’s as tender as it is savage
*Daily Mail*
A modern Australian Huckleberry Finn, in which a desperate teenager
embarks on a gruelling trek.
*The Times, The 100 best books to read this summer*
In language so tangy it feels almost edible, Winton tells the story
of young Jaxie Clackton, on the run across Australia, who finds an
all-too-brief salvation in a short-lived friendship with a
reclusive priest. Cosmic themes intermingle with an old-fashioned
adventure yarn, delivered in prose of the highest order.
*Daily Mail*
Tense, compassionate and profound . . . the language of Tim
Winton's mesmerizing new novel is double-distilled: Fintan speaks a
honeyed melody while Jaxie's is craw-bunged, staccato, gleefully
sprung with beauty and vitality . . . The Shepherd's Hut is a story
of seeing and being seen, of sight and insight.
*Times Literary Supplement*
A sense of place dominates The Shepherd’s Hut . . . Winton’s
descriptive energy makes its topography seem not exotic and other,
but vividly present. The novel builds like a thriller, or more
precisely like an Australian western . . . reminiscent of Cormac
McCarthy’s The Road . . . a parable of the rites of passage from
boyhood to manhood conducted in the implacable hinterland of the
Australian interior . . . The Shepherd’s Hut is the equivalent of
land art.
*FT Weekend*
As in all of Winton's work - there is a profound note of
spirituality running throughout this book. In Australian writing,
the most appropriate comparison is perhaps with Voss, Patrick
White's great novel of spiritual hunger and desolation . . . Winton
has created two models of masculinity in The Shepherd's Hut. The
one is brutal and to all intents and purposes incoherent; it uses
fist and belt to express rage; and it has the backing of society
into the bargain. But Jaxie himself is a poet of sorts, in spite of
his taciturn ways: his idiom is lyrical; and his life is a search
for a different expression of how a man might live
*Irish Times*
Think The Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, Portnoy’s
Complaint, Jane Eyre, or Lolita. The Shepherd’s Hut….belongs to
that group of novels remarkable for their narrator’s
voice….Winton’s prose – and storyline – is reminiscent of Cormac
McCarthy’s. His nimble sentences wield an irresistible power that
seems like literary legerdemain. Jaxie’s peripatetic tale is
harrowing, though humorous in places, and a coming of age saga like
no other….the slow burn of the opening chapters changes to a
high-octane thriller….is as powerful as anything he has ever
written….Young Jaxie Clackton – you’ll want to follow him anywhere,
even into the burning hell of his self-imposed expatriation.
*The Memphis Flyer*
The Shepherd’s Hut is a thrilling and thought-provoking novel,
rooted in both the internal and physical worlds, in the perils of
the present and the weight of history, in questions of identity,
faith and nature. While at times shockingly violent, and frequently
ugly, it also contains, at its heart, a sense of hope, of
grace.
*Toronto Star*
Winton’s story is worthy of a Peckinpah film – and splendidly
written, if disturbing to the core.
*Kirkus*
A fast-paced noir-ish outback crime thriller by a writer who in the
reading of his fiction seems capable of anything….he writes with
extraordinary pace and economy as well as an acute ear for the
Australian vernacular….The Shepherd’s Hut moves with a kinetic
garishness akin to a Mad Max film and is the compelling work of a
novelist who has mastered his craft.
*Irish Independent*
Winton thrusts the reader into the barren and unforgiving salt land
in Western Australia. With the author’s intimate knowledge of the
harsh landscape, it serves as a catalyst for action. Jaxie’s
distinctive, gritty language renders his story visceral, and an
absolute thrill to read.
*Booklist*
He has carved a voice that is uniquely Australian, finding poetry
and an austere beauty in local vernacular and landscape….A fable
about acceptance and forgiveness, teenager Jaxie Clackton is a
victim of domestic violence in a desperate quest that mirrors both
“Huckleberry Finn” and the knights from the tales of King Arthur,
he must overcome physical deprivation to reach the girl he loves.
Along the way, he finds a different intimacy: friendship with
exiled Irish priest Fintan MacGillis who lives in a shepherd’s hut
with only the kangaroos for company.
*The New York Times*
Winton’s novel is alive with pain and suffering, but it is also
full of moments of grace and small acts of kindness. Gorgeously
written and taut with eloquent, edge suspense, Jaxie’s journey is a
portrait of young manhood amidst extreme conditions, both inward
and outward.
*Publishers Weekly*
Winton wraps up his tale with some heightened tension and visceral
thrills. Far more gripping, though, is Jaxie’s full-bodied
narrative voice, which is the driving force of the novel….Winton is
a master ventriloquist of Australian vernacular….Jaxie is a
captivating hero….Winton has triumphed again. This is a terrifying,
electrifying novel charged by a singular voice and expert
storytelling.
*Star Tribune*
It is so powered by elemental forces, by a kind of wild poetry,
that it soars into the literary stratosphere and into the human
heart as if it were itself an arrow of light….the author introduces
a plot twist so terrifying the book should have come with a
warning….And in Jaxie Clackton, Winton seems to have reached deep
into the landscape to breathe life into a character who is timeless
as he is timely….The Shepherd’s Hut assails the senses.
*South China Morning Post*
Jaxie tells the story in a laconic, unshockable voice that is
varied by some remembered dialogue. The novel is an Antipodean
Huckleberry Finn…its narrative makes The Shepherd’s Hut a powerful
experience.
*Australian Book Review*
This novel charms with its intense evocation of one of the most
landlocked stretches of WA….Winton sets one of his most moving and
memorable explorations of father/son relationships in the
interaction between a teenage Jaxie Clackton and an elderly Irish
priest….In a lifetime of fine literary achievements The Shepherd’s
Hut is likely to be recognized as one of Winton’s deepest and most
memorable.
*The Advertiser*
It is a story of redemption, but one in which the author and his
characters stare unblinkingly at the human animal – redeemed not in
spite of its animality but through it….this is a very beautiful
novel
*The Monthly*
Austere, beautiful and compelling. It has a subtle moral clarity
that stands out even in a career that has relentlessly searched for
the gold hidden in human rubble….After three readings it is still
yielding the riches of its unblinking vision of hope, a vision that
will renew readers for generations to come.
*The Age, The Canberra Times*
Jaxie is destined to be a new Aussie literary hero. Tim Winton is a
modern-day master; he seems to be able to produce gem after gem
that remain in the reader’s consciousness long after the last
page.
*Books + Publishing*
The Shepherd's Hut has a grittiness that fills your mouth, eyes and
nostrils. This reviewer devoured it mostly in one sitting, but the
story lingers on. If only for a bit longer with Jaxie. Verdict: A
masterstroke.
*Herald Sun*
Winton’s achievement in these pages is a piece with his larger
fictional project. He seeks to re-enchant the world, and to
provide, via the essentially sceptical machinery of literature, a
sense of secular communion.
*Weekend Australian Review*
Tim Winton really is one of Australian literature’s great
tenebrists, a master of forced intensities of light and shadow and
a connoisseur of images that linger in the mind like obscure
portents.
*The Saturday Paper*
There are no wasted words and there’s no literary meandering on the
way to “the point”. This is freestyle, no-crash-helmet prose
*Qantas*
Quite why this chewy slab of literary fiction didn’t make the Man
Booker long list is a mystery . . . A visceral meditation on faith,
salvation and guilt, delivered with the hard-boiled brio of a
western
*Metro*
Compelling and moving
*New Statesman*
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