Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2014, 432 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2015, 432 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Poornima Apte
Buy This Book
An exhilarating new book from Australia's most acclaimed writer
Tim Winton is Australia's most decorated and beloved literary novelist. Short-listed twice for the Booker Prize and the winner of a record four Miles Franklin Awards for Best Australian Novel, he has a gift for language virtually unrivaled among English-language novelists. 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 Eyrie, Winton crafts the story of Tom Keely, a man struggling to accomplish good in an utterly fallen world. Once an ambitious, altruistic environmentalist, Keely now finds himself broke, embroiled in scandal, and struggling to piece together some semblance of a life. From the heights of his urban high-rise apartment, he surveys the wreckage of his life and the world he's tumbled out of love with. Just before he descends completely into pills and sorrow, a woman from his past and her preternatural child appear, perched on the edge of disaster, desperate for help.
When you're fighting to keep your head above water, how can you save someone else from drowning? As Keely slips into a nightmarish world of con artists, drug dealers, petty violence, and extortion, Winton confronts the cost of benevolence and creates a landscape of uncertainty. Eyrie is a thrilling and vertigo-inducing morality tale, at once brutal and lyrical, from one of our finest storytellers.
I
So.
Here was this stain on the carpet, a wet patch big as a coffee table. He had no idea what it was or how it got there. But the sight of it put the wind right up him.
Until now Thursday hadn’t seemed quite so threatening.
It was a simple enough thing, waking late and at liberty to the peals of the town hall clock below. Eight, nine, maybe ten in the a.m. – Keely lacked the will to count. All that stern, Calvinist tolling gave him the yips. Even closed, his eyes felt wine-sapped. He hung on a while delaying the inevitable, wondering just how much grief lay in wait. The tiny flat was hot already. Thick and heady with the fags and showers and fry-ups and dish-suds of others. The smells of his good neighbours. Which is to say the stench of strangers, for his fellow tower-dwellers were alien to him in the most satisfying way imaginable, anonymous and reassuringly disconnected, mere thuds and throat-clearings behind bare brick walls, laugh tracks and pongs he needn’t ...
Always one to emphasize plot and pace, Winton excels at crackling cinematic dialog, the best I have read in a long time. It serves to keep the tension high as the stakes grow increasingly desperate. Winton’s signature characters – strong women and troubled men – are also a strong component of Eyrie. Tom Keely might not be a very likeable character, but most readers can find something to relate to in his desperate struggle to hang on to some ballast in his life...continued
Full Review
(788 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Poornima Apte).
Tim Winton, the author of Eyrie, is that rare thing: a literary best-selling writer. While most American readers might still be getting to know this prolific author, he is as close to a national monument as person can get in his native Australia.
Born in 1960, Winton started work on his first novel at the age of just 19 when he was enrolled in a creative writing course at Curtin University in Perth. That first work, the novel Open Swimmer, went on to win the Vogel Australian National Literary Award. Since then, Winton has written dozens of books: novels, short-story collections and books for children. His work has received close to two-dozen awards including the prestigious Miles Franklin award. Two novels, Dirt Music and The Riders ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Eyrie, try these:
by Jane Harper
Published 2019
Two brothers meet in the remote Australian outback when the third brother is found dead, in this stunning new standalone novel from New York Times bestseller Jane Harper.
by Jane Harper
Published 2019
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dry, when a hiker goes missing, secrets and betrayal among friends are exposed, and Agent Aaron Falk will find out what happened.
All You Have to Do Is Call
by Kerri Maher
An inspiring novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who fought for our right to choose.
The Wren, the Wren
by Anne Enright
An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.
25 Copies to Give Away!
A daring CIA operation threatens chaos in the Kremlin. But can Langley trust the Russian at its center?
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
