The Turning by Tim Winton is a collection of short stories and I picked up a hard cover edition with deckled edges from a second hand bookshop back in 2017. At the time I'd been contacted by the BBC World Book Club about my 2013 review of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, and while they acknowledged I'd read the book some years ago, they asked if I'd be interested in submitting a recorded question for their upcoming interview with the author. Naturally I said 'YES' and then picked up this little gem the next day.
I didn't get around to reading The Turning before the interview aired and it wasn't relevant to the question I decided to submit anyway, so the purchase then languished on my shelves for the next 7 years! Do you have books like that?
Set in and around a fictional town called Angelus on the coast of Western Australia, Winton returns to some of his favourite themes of adolescent boys, coming of age stories, working classes, domestic disharmony, beaches and surfing.
Early on, the main character in Big World enjoys camping and hiking with his mate Biggie and describes him as 'not a very introspective bloke':
"Biggie loves all the practical stuff, reading maps, trying survival techniques, learning bushcraft. I'm more into the birds and plants and stars and things... Biggie truly is a funny bugger.... He can fart whole sentences, a skill St Augustine admired in others. He's not much for hygiene. His hair's always greasy and that navel smells like toejam. He doesn't swim. He couldn't carry a tune in a bucket but he can find true north by instinct." Page 9This relationship between two mates leaving school was a solid start to the collection and I found the deep insight provided into their bond of mateship eye opening.
Later in Aquifer, our narrator reflects on the time a red telephone box was installed near to where he lived, and those of us of a certain age will surely be able to relate:
"I suppose I was five or six when I learned to go in and stand on tiptoe to reach up and dial 1194 to hear a man with a BBC voice announce the exact time. I did that for years, alone and in company, listening to the authority in the man 's voice. He sounded like he knew what he was on about, that at the stroke it would indeed be the time he said it was. It was a delicious thing to know, that at any moment of the day, when adults weren't about, you could dial yourself something worth knowing, something irrefutable, and not need to pay." Page 40Cloudstreet by Tim Winton remains one of my favourite books and I've been hesitant to pick up another by this much beloved Australian author out of fear it wouldn't be anywhere near as good. Regular Carpe Librum readers will know I hate it when authors don't include punctuation for dialogue in their novels, and while it curiously didn't bother me in Cloudstreet I found it irritating here; often interrupting my reading flow to determine who was speaking.
The settings, character arcs and dialogue are all very Australian, and I could definitely relate to this:
"Erin and I walked everywhere. Outside of school there was nothing else to do but traipse to the wharf or the beach or down the drab strip of shops where the unchanging window displays and familiar faces made me feel desperate." Page 255Some of the short stories seemed to have a natural end point while others left me wanting more. I was hoping the author would bring all of the characters together in the end and while there was certainly some overlap of characters in the present and the past, the lack of resolution or overarching conclusion made for a 3 star reading experience overall.
Published in 2004, I've since learned The Turning was adapted into a film in 2013 starring Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving and Miranda Otto. The Turning by Tim Winton is recommended for those who enjoy short stories and Australian fiction.
