THE SHEPHERD’S HUT

(Picador £14.99) TWO stand-out novels already this year have immersed themselves in the punishing, almost cosmic hostility of the Australian landscape — Peter Carey’s A Long Way From Home and Jane Harper’s Force Of Nature. Now comes the latest novel from Tim Winton, the story of Jaxie Clackton, a teenager on the run through the outback.

Convinced he’ll be blamed for the death of his brute of a dad, and with his beloved mother also recently deceased, he has nothing to lose.

Armed only with an old gun, a butter knife and his wits, he sets off on a possibly hopeless journey across Australia.

Clackton is an absolutely wonderful creation, with the unpredictable aggression of an adult stuffed into the soul of a child and a voice as hardscrabble and jagged as the bush itself.

As the novel unfolds, he meets and forges a tentative friendship with a priest living by himself in the middle of the outback for reasons that can only have terrible repercussions. The result is an uncompromising novel that’s as tender as it is savage.