The Shepherd’s Hut

Jaxie doesn’t fit. With a dead mum and a drunken dad who parents with his fists, he has plenty to be angry about. When his dad is killed in an accident, Jaxie reckons he’ll be the chief suspect. So he legs it into the vast, arid salt country of Western Australia, taking just his rifle and determination. Out in the middle of nowhere, he encounters an old hermit, a dope farm and a whole lot of trouble. As rite-of-passage yarns go, this is hardcore, fugitive-alone-in-unforgiving-landscape stuff. With terse, fragmented sentences, Tim Winton slots us right inside the volatile teenage brain of his narrator. There are no wasted words and there’s no literary meandering on the way to “the point”. This is freestyle, no-crash-helmet prose that is as refreshing as sincerity from a politician. The plot, which drags you into its adrenalised slipstream, will have you dreading the worst while hoping for a microwave-ready miracle. Book of the year? has the confident swagger of a contender.