CLAIRE ALLFREE

THE SHEPHERD’S HUT (Picador £14.99) eARlIeR this year, Australian novelist Peter Carey published A long Way From home, a boisterous, Fifties road- trip across the Australian outback. For my money, this novel — also a road- trip of sorts, across the same brutal landscape — is far superior. In language so tangy it feels almost edible, Winton tells the story of young Jaxie Clackton, on the run across Australia, who finds an alltoo-brief salvation in a short-lived friendship with a reclusive priest. Cosmic themes intermingle with an old-fashioned adventure yarn, delivered in prose of the highest order.