The Turning
(Tim Winton)
A truly engaging collection of short stories set in coastal Western Australia. The stories stand alone as beautifully precise insights into the human condition, and yet link together through the characters portrayed in an unexpected and curiously satisfying way to provide an even deeper and more complex understanding of humanity.
The stories deal with incidents that are told and retold throughout the book from the differing perspectives of the characters over a few decades in the later half of the Twentieth Century. These tales tell of ordinary people leading seemingly ordinary lives. Part of the beauty of this collection is that we can relate so well to these people. They all struggle through life, in the same way we do. Some of them carry pressing burdens which they are trying to escape from. Adolescence, middle-age, and old age are all examined and what is interesting is that we see each of these stages inextricably linked to the next , with the experience of childhood remaining incredibly powerful and influential throughout the course of a life.
Tim Winton manages to illuminate the fragility of people, at the same time as showing us the strength of the human heart, and one is allowed to see how emotions such as hatred and fear can turn to compassion with the healing hand of time. There is a sense of an increasing weight of nostalgia as the book develops with a cathartic release towards the end of the last story. These stories work together to take you on a journey of understanding through the darkness of failure, regret, and disappointment through to the realities of responsibility, loyalty, love, and forgiveness.
Winton has the ability to sum up in a single sentence a feeling or emotion that most of us have carried with us for years, but haven't ever managed to describe. This book is full of them and is certainly worth a read. If you read to learn more about yourself, you will find plenty of food for thought here.
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