Even though it was years ago, I remember when I first discovered Tim Winton . I would frequently spend part of a Sunday afternoon at my favorite bookstore which sadly is no longer in existence. I would browse the shelves not looking for anything in particular and I picked up Cloudstreet because I was attracted to the title. I bought it, read it and loved it . After that I read Dirt Music and Breath. I was drawn to read this because of my enjoyment of those novels. If you haven’t read Winton, I would recommend starting with one of his earlier works. If you are a Winton fan, I definitely recommend it.

This is the raw and rough to read story of Jaxie Clackton, a teenage boy on the run through the brutal and wild outback, not for anything he’s done but for what’s been done to him. He’s on the run from his miserable young life of physical abuse and feeling like the outcast. The first part of the book, a profile in loneliness is rather sad as Jaxie recounts his past. He’s a pitiful soul, in spite of the rough talk and vulgarity . He has no family or friends , only the fear of being caught for something he didn’t do and the hope that he could get to the girl he loves, his cousin. He’s tough but vulnerable when he crosses paths with Fintan MacGillis, an ex priest, living a secluded life in the wild. It’s this unlikely friendship that impacts Jaxie on his way forward.

I have to admit that I didn’t quite get all of the slang and had to google a few words if I couldn’t guess the meaning. Some of the more profane were easy to guess. If you are sensitive to this, it may not be for you. Another warning - there is killing of animals for food but there is one scene of animal cruelty that was hard to read. In spite of these reservations, I thought it was a moving story of a boy’s journey to manhood.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Farrah, Straus and Giroux through NetGalley.

I was drawn to this book, my first by this (twice Booker shortlisted) author, from a speech he gave while promoting the book, one in which he sets out clearly his interest in exploring the topic of toxic masculinity and it's poisonous influence on boys in turn marginalised by society.

The book is about one such boy Jaxie, who lives in a small Western Australian twin with his mother and physically abusive father - whose own actions and character it is hinted come from wartime traumas witnessed in Vietnam or Korea.

All the mechanisms which should protect Jaxie against the abuse fail him: institutional - his school are focused on dealing with the symptoms of the abuse as they emerge in Jamie's violent and delinquent behaviour (the passing on of the toxicity) and have no interest in the causes; societal - his father's friendship with the police chief of the small town causes his neighbours to turn a blind eye and deaf ear; familial - Jaxie long assumed his mother's actions, even her unwillingness to leave his father, are focused on protecting him, but after a pivotal row one Christmas (when his father discovers his clandestine physical relationship with his cousin Lee) he realises even his mother will not protect him; his cousin is forbidden contact and his mother soon succumbs to cancer cementing his sense of abandonment.

All of this is recounted in flashback, the actual narrative of the novel beginning when Jaxie stumbles across his father's dead body, crushed under the car he was working on, and convinced he will be accused of engineering the death, decides to flee to the deserted outback, with an eventual I'll thought through plan to get to and elope with his cousin, hundreds of miles North.

His father was a butcher and the tracking, survival and butchering skills Jaxie has picked up as part of his poisonous inheritance may about serve to keep him alive.

At a pivotal point he decides to venture to a salt plain as he needs a preservation mechanism for the meat he is hunting and there stumbles across another person living in the wilds - Fintan, an Irish priest, seemingly placed in a rough shepherds hut by his church as some form of part punishment/part isolation for some only ever hInted at actions he committed and atrocities (perhaps anti-communist massacres) he witnessed.

Jaxie, perhaps for the first time, being given the benefit of the doubt by an adult, teaches an uneasy truce with Fintan and the two live in close proximity.

Both elements of the Fintan character as an Irish priest are important. The Irish / Australian link features in the Wild Colonial Boy, an Irish-Aussie ballad that Fintan songs when Jaxie first meets him and in their terrible closing encounter and one which could have been an alternate title for this book.

Religion, faith, redemption, death, justice, sacrifice, good and evil all feature heavily in the book - as Fintan shares something of his life and worldview and gradually allows Daxie to re examine his own.

Flawed families are also important - both Daxie and Fintan simultaneously abandoned by and hugely resentful of their family (the Catholic church for the latter) but also finding in it their only sustenance (physical for Fintan, emotional for Daxie) that ultimately allows them to continue.

A sense of place is vital to this novel. Unlike the typical Western Australian coastal settings of Winton’s novels, this is set in the desolate salt planes and old gold mines of the state. A location Winton has said he had always wanted to use as a setting for a novel but one rich with symbolism for his thesis on the crisis of masculinity.

The desolation of abandoned gold mines and prospector huts stands in for the way traditional masculinity has been justifiably hollowed out, but not replenished with any new sustainable form of male identity:

And the harsh poisoned salt mines for the toxicity of what currently stands as modern masculinity

The book is recounted in the first person by Jaxie, whose speech is reproduced by Winton raw, salted (just as Jaxie salts his meat) with Aussie expletives and slang (although nothing an English reader would not understand immediately - Ute, VB, Abo) - I had originally used the word unfiltered, but actually it becomes clear that the book is in fact told as remembered by Jaxie later and explicitly filtered through and altered by the shift in his worldview from his encounter with Fintan.

Fintan's speech (as remembered by Jaxie) is littered with Irish (i particularly enjoyed "look at you with your orangemans stare") and biblical allusions (I noted phrases from Proverbs, Daniel, Ecclesiastes, 1 Samuel, John).

The book reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's the road and follows I think in the tradition of Hucklebery Finn - a book Winton lead with in a recent interview when asked to list his favourite books of all time. In the following question, asked to identify the last good book he read, Winton plumped for Jon McGregor, not Reservoir 13 though (despite describing it as great) but Even The Dogs - and ultimately the two books have much in common: powerful but uncomfortable reads, confronting difficult elements in their society, alluding to the aftermath of active military service in creating those elements, but acting as an urgent plea for readers not to judge the actions and dates of those elements, but simply to start to try and understand and engage with them.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC by Netgalley.

Jackson "Jaxie" Clackton, 16 years old, was continually abused by his dad, Sid Clackton. Clackton, master butcher in the town of Monkton, used Jaxie as a punching bag. Jaxie was a bad tempered school delinquent nicknamed "Jaxie Horsemeat" by his peers. In turn, he enjoyed punching students for ill-treating him. Jaxie was currently nursing a black eye given to him during one of Clackton's drunken rages. Wishing and hoping his dad would die, imagine his shock finding his father crushed under a car, Apparently, the vehicle slipped off a high-lift jack in the shed. Fear of being blamed for his father's death caused Jaxie to quickly leave home. He headed north for Magnet, approximately 300 kilometers from Monkton. His meager supplies included an Igloo jug, a rifle with ammo, four oranges and a pair of binoculars.

Jaxie knew how to hunt and butcher, however, all he had with him for butchering was a butter knife. His trip plan was as follows: keep his "sh**" together, rest, find water, and get to Magnet to see girlfriend Lee, the one person he felt connected to. Soon, his Igloo jug was pretty near empty, his bad eye throbbed and his rifle was getting mighty heavy. His trek across the vast Australian Outback was brutal and unforgiving. He must replenish his water supply, and soon. Finally, he happened upon the hut of Fintan MacGinnis, a singing, loquacious Irishman who claimed that his abode, in the middle of nowhere, was his refuge as well as exile. Fintan, a mysterious solitary man encouraged Jaxie to stay for a while.

Two souls, one starting life's journey while the other's journey winding down, are both damaged individuals. Was any human connection possible? The harshness and brutalities of life were ever present in this novel, be they the unforgiving land or the cruelty of one's fellow man. The colorful, vernacular language definitely gave "The Shepherd's Hut" a gritty, hardscrabble feel. As a reader unfamiliar with the writing of Tim Winton, I was unaware that he is one of Australia's most acclaimed authors. "The Shepherd's Hut" was an awesome and excellent introduction to Winton's literary gems! I highly recommend this book!

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Shepherd's Hut".

I love Tim Winston's work. Can't wait for more from him! Highly recommended to others at my library~

A favorite of Australian readers, Tim Winton (who was named a Living Treasure in 2007) has been a favorite of mine since Dirt Music in 2002. His earthy, sometimes supernatural novels arise out of his native Western Australia, which is the setting for The Shepherd's Hut, his latest. Here is the story of Jaxie Clackton, a 15 year old troublemaker who on the basis of an extraordinarily brutal childhood, takes off across the salt lakes in the belief that the law is hard on his heels.

Jaxie narrates using the vernacular of his rough life, owning up to his bad choices, taking blame whether justified or not. When he comes across a fellow exile, there is mistrust on his side despite no obvious threat, and he finds his inner world expanded as his external life continues to meet challenges. Recently there seem to have been a rash of novels about feral children usually victims of abuse or neglect who take to the wilds, but this novel is in a class by itself.

Jaxie Clacton’s life has been a hard one, with an abusive father and an abused, but much loved, mother. One day something happens that makes Jaxie flee from his home into the empty salt lands of Western Australia where life is as harsh and unforgiving as anything he has ever known. The reader accompanies teenage Jaxie on his journey through this vast emptiness as we hope against hope that there might be a happy – or at least not unhappy – ending for him. This evocative coming-of-age novel is a wonderful piece of imaginative fiction. Jaxie’s voice comes over loud and clear and ranks with other memorable young voices like Holden Caulfield – in fact for me Jaxie’s voice is even more vivid and unforgettable. As is the landscape that Winton conjures up – so harsh, so empty, and oh that heat and lack of water. Winton is a truly masterful storyteller and this brutal, raw and yet tender novel is one of his best.

In this book, Winton writes like a very Australian version of Cormac McCarthy who decided to tackle the topic of toxic masculinity - yes, you heard that right, and the result is absolutely astounding. The story is told from the perspective of protagonist and antihero Jaxie Clackton (who speaks in strong Australian slang), a teenage boy who grew up with a violent, alcoholic father and a mother who stood by and failed to protect him, until she finally died from cancer. When Jaxie's father dies by accident, Jaxie fears that he will be blamed because everybody knew that he hated his dad (thus inferring that the whole community must have known about his situation, but nobody stepped in).

As a consequence, Jaxie decides to run away and goes on a journey through the Australian wilderness in order to pick up his cousin Lee, whom he loves, and ultimately build a better life with her. When he comes across an old shepherd's hut which is inhabited by a mysterious former priest, this encounter will change Jaxie's life forever.

This novel is not for the faint of heart: There is a lot of blood and slaughtering (literal and metaphorical) going on, and Jaxie, who has never been protected and cared for by his parents, is shockingly brutal and caught up in his idea that he needs to show disaffection and what he perceives as strength at all times. His disconnection and alienation becomes almost unbearable to read when he talks about his cruelty against animals.

Pain, killing and death are major themes in the book, and the questions what differentiates dead meat from a living creature and whether there is something like a "good death" lead directly to the existential challenge to find something to live for.

As you might expect in a novel that stars an Irish-Catholic ex-priest and a teenager from Monkton (Monk-ton, got it?) hanging out in a shepherd's (!) hut near a salt (!) lake, the author contemplates questions of spirituality, using biblical themes and letting his characters meditate on pantheism in the Australian wilderness. But the question whether there is a God or not is not the main concern here; rather, it's the question how to overcome alienation and loneliness, how to learn empathy and to feel connected to nature and other people. Ultimately, it's also the question of how we can feel ourselves.

I really enjoyed how Winton managed to convey the inner workings of Jaxie, and how is whole persona is challenged and questioned by someone who simply sees him and listens to him. This is a terribly disturbing and brutal story of redemption, and it is equally cruel and beautiful.

Jaxie Clackton is a troubled teenager living in a remote Western Australian town. One night he comes home to a shocking discovery, and decides to pack some gear and take flight. He soon regrets his haste once he realises how poorly he has equipped himself, but his only choice is to press on in his journey in to the arid wilderness.

What follows is a taut account of Jaxie's stumbling journey, driven by an imperative to survive at all costs. He has his share of luck, bolstered by sound instincts, but he is at the end of his rope when he comes upon the shepherd's hut and its eccentric occupant, Finton.

Winton's descriptions of the countryside that Jaxie staggers through are compelling and real. The reader feels the glare off the endless salt lake and the burn of the desert sun. The beauty that Finton finds in a landscape of mirages is conveyed by Winton's evocative prose. His appreciation of the forbidding vistas of his home state is obvious. This short novel is both violent and tender, and a great example of Winton's ability to portray Australia. My only reservation would be whether this book would have much appeal to non-Australians, who might find Jaxie's colloquial voice somewhat impenetrable.