The Shepherd's Hut: A Novel

by Tim Winton

Overview

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 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250215048
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	06/11/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	4.80(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Tim Winton is widely considered one of the greatest living Australian writers. He has published numerous books, 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). He lives in Western Australia.

Editorial Reviews

"A mournful and fast-paced journey into the life of a young man on his own . . . 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, edgy suspense, Jaxie’s journey is a portrait of young manhood amidst extreme conditions, both inward and outward." —Publisher's Weekly, starred review

"Winton thrusts the reader into the barren and unforgiving salt land in western Australia . . . An absolute thrill to read.” —Booklist

“A brilliant tour-de-force.” —Adam Woog, The Seattle Times

"Winton is a one-man band of genius." —Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times

“Too plaintive to put down . . . hypnotic . . . here’s survivalist fiction at its rawest from a novelist who sometimes sounds as bleak as our own Cormac McCarthy.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

From the Publisher

★ 04/30/2018
The latest from Winton (Breath) is a mournful and fast-paced journey into the life of a young man on his own. Left by himself after the death of his violent, hateful father, teenager Jaxie Clackton sets out deep into the empty saltlands of Western Australia, searching for peace and solitude. As he heads slowly north, intending to return to the only person who’s ever loved him, he hunts kangaroo and stays away from the highways, carrying little but his rifle, water bottle, and binoculars. But soon Jaxie meets exiled Irish Catholic priest Fintan MacGillis. He must decide if he can trust MacGillis’s offer of rest and help—and then whether he will continue on to his original destination. The two fall into a rhythm, and possibly a friendship, until they discover something dangerous in the desert that threatens their safety. 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, edgy suspense, Jaxie’s journey is a portrait of young manhood amidst extreme conditions, both inward and outward. (June)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2018-05-28
Renowned Australian novelist Winton (The Boy Behind the Curtain, 2016, etc.) turns once again to the dark side of the Antipodean dream.Jaxie Clackton, whose very name sounds like a curse, is a poster child for teenage disaffection. As Winton's story opens, he's on the run. And for good reason: As that story begins to unfold, we learn that his stepfather, whom he unlovingly calls "Captain Wankbag"—"that bucket of dog sick was a bastard to both of us," he protests to his mother, who will soon die of cancer—has wound up on the wrong side of a jacked-up car, and Jaxie fears that the good people of Monkton will assume the worst: "They'll say I kicked the jack out from under the roo bar and crushed his head like a pig melon." Given a long history of drunken beatings and loud arguments, the neighbors would have a point, so Jaxie lights out for the territory, where his girlfriend awaits him. First, though, Jaxie has to go to Ned Kelly and hide out for a while, which puts him in the Outback orbit of a disgraced ex-priest named Fintan who, alone with his books in a dusty camp, makes a poor hermit, given as he is to outrushing bursts of speech: "Please God, whatever I was I am no longer….All is forgotten, if not forgiven—it could have come to that. But I don't trust the thought. I don't know if it's because it would be too easy or too terrible to imagine no one cares anymore." Unaccustomed to the strange discipline of the place—Fintan even gives him a toothbrush, for heaven's sake—Jaxie is suspicious, secretive, a short step away from violence. He has an opportunity to make use of that penchant once others discover Fintan's whereabouts, leaving it to Jaxie to become "an instrument of God" in all his terrible wrath.Winton's story is worthy of a Peckinpah film—and splendidly written, if disturbing to the core.

Kirkus Reviews