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Published Sep 2005
336 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Tim Winton's stunning collection of connected stories is about turnings of all kinds -- changes of heart, slow awakenings, nasty surprises and accidents, sudden detours, resolutions made or broken. Brothers cease speaking to each other, husbands abandon wives and children, grown men are haunted by childhood fears. People struggle against the weight of their own history and try to reconcile themselves to their place in the world. With extraordinary insight and tenderness, Winton explores the demons and frailties of ordinary people whose lives are not what they had hoped.
'These stories convey the quiet authority of a man at ease in a fictional territory he can legitimately call his own...a writer whose work is informed by an intimate and unsentimental connection with a particular landscape and the lives it sustains.' - The Guardian, London.
'Winton reveals a wide but finely turned swath of simmering inner lives; the sweetness of these stories, as well as their sharp bite, feels earned and real. - PW Starred Review.
Comment: Tim Winton (Cloudstreet, Dirt Music etc) is a household name in his native Australia, where his books, usually set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, are pretty much permanent fixtures on the bestseller lists. However, he has yet to achieve wide recognition in the USA.
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Photo: Denise Fitch
The preeminent Australian novelist of his generation, Tim Winton is the author of the bestselling novels Cloudstreet, The Riders, and Dirt Music, among many other books. He has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music, and Breath) and has twice been short-listed for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.
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