'The Shepherd’s Hut follows Jaxie, who flees his sleepy hometown and abusive father and heads north ‘for the only person in the world who understands him’. Jaxie ‘traverses the vast, bare West Australian wheatbelt, heading towards the abandoned goldfields, staying out of sight long enough to reach the refuge of the salt country at the edge of the desert’. ' (Publication summary)
Dedication: In memory of Gill Dennis
Epigraph: Change is hard and hope is violent -Liam Rector, 'Song Years'
'This article argues that salt functions as a transformative marking and shaping agent in Tim Winton’s work. Salt scars both people and place (externally and internally, physically and spiritually) while also signifying sanctuary (both a refuge and a holy space). Salt leaves both subtle and obvious imprints on the landscape, the built environment, and on minor and major characters in Winton’s novels and non-fiction. Winton scripts material and psychological salt scars that result from discomfort and danger, and which foster healing and/or peace for his characters. Landscape salt in Winton’s works also generates spaces that are protective for his characters, whose situations tend to be so precarious and so isolated. Most remarkably, however, landscape salt amplifies the sacredness of these ‘thin and bitter’ places. The suggestion of sacredness is complemented by Winton’s erudite and flawed mentor characters whose conversations gesture eloquently toward the numinous in these salt landscapes.' (Publication abstract)
'Critical literature concerning Tim Winton’s male protagonists is divided. Whilst various critics ultimately celebrate Winton’s men and their sacred communion with nature (McCredden, Ashcroft, Birns), others critique such characters as embodiments of brute androcentrism (Schürholz, Knox). But there is room to read Winton’s representations of masculinity more fluidly, particularly if we account for the strong environmentalist thread in his fiction. In his most recent novel The Shepherd’s Hut (2018), damaged and bung-eyed teenager Jaxie Claxton traverses the Western Australian interior and grapples with the traumatic influence of his abusive father. Jaxie’s engagement with nature is complex and often contradictory – he constantly oscillates between aggressive hostility and a more enlightened biocentric humility. Whilst aware of the novel’s overt engagement with patriarchal violence and toxic masculinity, this paper seeks to explore these complex environmental nuances – most significantly, Jaxie’s revision of pastoral anthropocentrism. ' (Publication abstract)
'Tim Winton is one of Australia’s most decorated novelists. Over the course of a long career, he has successfully combined popular appeal with literary accolades. Born, raised, and living in the southwest of Western Australia, he writes about this land and its people as an imagined place and community, often engaging with themes of violence, desire, and belonging. Winton’s many prizes include four Miles Franklin Awards, two Man Booker short-listings and a Centenary Medal. In 2007, he was named a National Living Treasure. For a long time, Winton has participated in community activism. After appearing at the Perth Writers Festival, we caught up to talk about the American release of his latest work, The Shepherd’s Hut.'
Source: Magazine blurb.
'Set in western Australia, Tim Winton’s newest novel features a teenager who wants to escape an abusive home but can’t do so until his parents pass. Anger, a determination to get to a beloved cousin in another town, and a thoughtlessness in leaving that could make him a fugitive suspected of murder all mix to create an unstable character in Jaxie Clackton.'
'The Shepherd‘s Hut is more than a novel: it has the shape and pattern of a very Australian, very modern, epic.
'Tim Winton can be hard on his characters. He drowned the Lambs’ favourite son, then only half gave him back. He sent Scully on a chase through Europe desperately looking for a woman who didn‘t want him. He made Pikelet seek redemption for the sins of others in the blood and guts of the ambulance service. But he really gives it to Jaxie Clackton. A dead mother. A violent, alcoholic father. A town that hates him. A love that humiliates him. And a name that almost means arsehole. Twice.' (Introduction)
'Set in western Australia, Tim Winton’s newest novel features a teenager who wants to escape an abusive home but can’t do so until his parents pass. Anger, a determination to get to a beloved cousin in another town, and a thoughtlessness in leaving that could make him a fugitive suspected of murder all mix to create an unstable character in Jaxie Clackton.'
[Review] The Shepherd’s Hut
Melbourne
:
Bad Producer Productions
,
2018
14402116
2018
single work
review
'This is a brutal and bloody novel. If Tim Winton’s Breath left you drowning and gasping for air, The Shepherd’s Hut will leave you tasting dust, dirt and blood.'(Introduction)
'There are no sheep grazing anywhere near the shepherd’s hut of Tim Winton’s new novel. A few wild goats in the desolate landscape, some broken machinery: that’s all. The narrator, fifteen-year-old Jaxie Clackton, prime suspect for killing his abusive father, is on the run from the police. His scanty food supplies have dwindled almost to nothing and he is desperate for water. He has no gun and his only knife is no use for hunting.' (Introduction)
'The Shepherd’s Hut is the outrageous story of a headlong bolt through the remotest outback by a charismatic gun-toting teenager determined to reunite with his girlfriend half a continent away. It’s Winton’s 29th book and the closest thing he has written to a full-dress action-adventure thriller.' (Introduction)
'Tim Winton’s new novel, The Shepherd’s Hut, is a bit of a conundrum. True, it exhibits many of the well-known traits of Winton’s earlier works: representations of hurting men, bruised women; working-class identity; high lyricism and deeply vernacular dialogue intertwined; a sense of place as much more than simply landscape, but a living, breathing reality; a brooding on the experience of home, and a lack of belonging.' (Introduction)
'“Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got.”
'So thinks Jaxie Clackton as he hides out in the Western Australian wheatbelt, casing a corrugated iron shack. He’s on the run, having found his father crushed to death under a Toyota HiLux - an accident he imagines will be taken as a crime, since everyone in Monkton knows how mercilessly Sid Clackton beat his teenage son and late wife. With barely two boxes of bullets left for his rifle, and no way to preserve his kills, Jaxie has left camp in search of the salt lake, and it’s here he makes his discovery - an old shepherd’s hut with a single, strange, occupant.'' (Introduction)
