The Turning: Stories - Softcover

Winton, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743279794 ISBN 13: 9780743279796

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2006

Synopsis

Set on a coastal stretch of Western Australia, 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, resolves 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.

About this title

Review:

The writing of Tim Winton has long been noted for its elegance, precision and keen insight into the human soul. With The Turning, we are given one of the most precise and satisfying distillations of the novelist's art, albeit in what has long been something of an unfashionable form: the short story. The form is often regarded by publishers as something of a commercial liability, even though many great writers (from Somerset Maugham to William Trevor) have excelled in shorter fiction. But Winton, as well as being one of the finest novelists Australia has ever produced, is also a master of the form. The seventeen overlapping tales here encapsulate some of the most insightful observations that he has given us.

What makes the stories so unusual is the fashion in which Winton has managed to find the unusual within the everyday--here, ordinary people are subjected to extraordinary pressures, and everything from middle-aged loss to youthful vacillations of the heart crafted with great skill.

Winton (who was born in Perth in Western Australia) has published fifteen books and has won a variety of literary prizes. The stories here can only add lustre to his reputation. Big World is the story of a friendship between two undergraduates who take on unsatisfactory jobs one frigid January, such as sluicing the blood from the floor of a local meat factory. The duo set off by car in pursuit of diversion, and we learn that neither is particularly lovable (particularly the eccentric Biggie); as the tale advances, the narrator learns to his cost that friendship comes at a price. This immensely involving piece is written in the kind of lambent prose that often aspires to the condition of poetry, despite the banality of the two young men's lives. Similarly, The Turning deals with trailer life, and its unhappy, unfulfilled working-class women are brilliantly characterised. Whatever your feelings about the short story form, you will be doing yourself a disservice to miss this collection. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"The writing is frankly brilliant...each story attains a sort of powerful beauty. Winton shows us how startling ordinary life is."

-- The Boston Globe

"These stories have an austerity as lofty as the weather on this wild coast, and as capable of surprises."

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Tim Winton tenderly extends his broken characters a delicate grace."

-- Entertainment Weekly

"What John Steinbeck was to California's Central Valley, Tim Winton is to the coastal region of Western Australia.... Winton's ability to arrange the written word appears effortless."

-- San Francisco Chronicle

"The Turning is finely crafted without being showy; sincere and moving without any authorial tug at the heartstrings. The best stories are nearly -- what's the word I'm looking for? -- immaculate."

-- Bookforum

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0743279794
• ISBN 13: 9780743279796
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336