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The Turning, by Tim Winton

 
 
matsya
03:00 / 31.05.05
I just finished reading this, the latest book by West Australian author Tim Winton (Cloudstreet, That Eye The Sky, The Riders). I haven't read too much of his stuff - TETS and CS mainly, but I read CS when I was wee and... um... skipped all the "confusing dreamy stuff", which I later in life found out was the point of the book. heh. must go back and read it some day...

Anyway, I've just done with The Turning, which is a collection of short stories that intertwine in their references to a small coastal West Australian town called Angelus, which is the setting or the place where the main characters or their significant others grew up; and also in their telling the disjointed (ie, jumping forwards and backwards in time) life story of a guy called Vic Lang, son of the only honest policeman in otherwise drug-riddled and corrupt Angelus.

Thing is, most of the reviews I've read are all "ooh you think it's short stories, but then you realise there's all this intertwining of stories which makes it much more like a novel and hence, unquestionably BETTER for it", and I have to politely disagree in this short stories are sexy, novels are sexier thing.

For me, the intertwining in The Turning distracts you from reading the stories and gets you mystery-hunting instead, keeping an eye out for Vic or references to Angelus or other friends of Vic's or his parents, rather than just reading the story. Which is fair enough in itself, but if the point of this intertwining is to tell a larger story in fragments, which it seems reasonable to assume, then Winton doesn't really succeed. At the end of the book, having read the stories sequentially (ie, in the order they appear), and having picked up on the Vic Lang thread, I was hoping for some kind of resolution or conclusion that could be drawn from his life's difficulties (even if that conclusion was a non-resolution or non-conclusion). But it's not forthcoming. The final story ends just as all the other stories do, in a kind of doubtful moment of realisation on the part of the protagonist.

If I had my druthers, I'd have told Tim W. to not bother with the more overt aspects of his tying-in of threads and characters, and to simply make the stories unconnected. Because they're strong, powerful stories and they stand confidently on their own. In fact, the best stories in the collection, 'The Turning' and 'Small Mercies' are the ones that are least connected to the Vic Lang life-narrative (in fact I can't work out how they do tie in - I may need to read them again with an eye to discovering this). By initiating this connection device, it's like Winton isn't satisfied with the way the stories are by themselves, so he creates a connection that actually serves to distract from the powerful independence of the stories.

It might've worked if it was just about this stuff that happens to people from the town of Angelus, if Angelus was the only recurring element (though little nods to other stories from Angelus would help to create the small-town feel that Tim's managed to evoke convincingly). But the book becomes Vic's story about halfway through, and I think that detracts from the possibilities of what he was doing.

So, to sum up. Great collection of stories, not so good as a disjointed larger narrative.

Anyone else read this?

m.
 
 
astrojax69
03:42 / 02.06.05
haven't read 'the turning', but read and loved 'cloudstreet' some years back and i put it up there with christina stead's 'the man who loved children' as one of the great australian books.

unfortunately, i think this was his peak and recently read 'dirt music'. about the same time i read andrew macgahan's 'the white earth' - both books are very 'australian' and have the country as significant elements of the story - almost characters - and i must say that the latter book is wonderful, delightfully written, provocative, great narrative and poetic; much more than i could say about winton's book. he seems a little forced in his 'australian-ness' in it, almost too constructed. it doesn't flow from the writing, but is just written... does that make sense?

i did like his earlier collection of (not intertwined) stories 'scission'. have a go at that if you want fresher, better short stories... that said, i note your review did say you liked the individual stories, so will mebbe give it a burl some time. i too hate being distracetd by poorly executed effects in a book...

and 'a book' is a better term for a set of short stories that congeal into something more than their parts, rather than 'novel'. i think, anyway.
 
 
matsya
01:04 / 03.06.05
That's really funny - my mother made that Tim Winton/Christina Stead comparison last night. She gave me The Man Who Loved Children for Christmas a few years back but I haven't read it yet. I think I'll get onto it soon. I'm between novels at the moment, so maybe it'll be next.

Cheers for the recommend on scission, too.

m.
 
  
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