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For years Jaxie Clackton has dreaded going home. His beloved mum is dead, and he wishes his dad was too, until one terrible moment leaves his life stripped to nothing. No one ever told Jaxie Clackton to be careful what he wishes for. And so Jaxie runs. There's just one person in the world who understands him, but to reach her he'll have to cross the vast saltlands of Western Australia. It is a place that harbours criminals and threatens to kill those who haven't reckoned with its hot, waterless vastness. This is a journey only a dreamer - or a fugitive - would attempt.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Robert3167
Out of the mouths of angry young men. When we first meet Jaxie he’s in a car heading North.
“For the first time in me life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experience that I feel sorry for you.
But it wasn’t always like this. I been through fire to get
We don’t realise when this is occurring. Jaxie weaves his story between the now and then. The one constant is his anger.
“But shit was always being done to me, every single day, and sooner or later you figure you should be the one doing unto others. So by Year Four kids were scared of me. And I spose I liked that. “
Jaxie’s mother dies from Cancer has he now left alone with “Captain Wankbag. The Captain. Or just Cap for short. …That bucket of dog sick was a bastard to both of us, I wished he was dead.”
Jaxie has a pungent turn of phrase, descriptive, emotive, raw.
“And how did I end up poleaxed in a bin? The usual way, that’s how. He wouldn’t give you the sweat of his balls, the old Captain, but when it come to dishing out a bit of biff when you weren’t looking, well, then he was like fucking Santa.”
Circumstances put Jaxie on the road and on the run. Ill prepared he ventures into the scrub where meats Fintan MacGillis who may or may not have been many things. Their interaction at the old shepherds hut Fintan is living in is like an elaborate dance. A step forward here met by a side step there, a shuffle, a hop. These two damaged people start to heal each other. Neither admitting what was happening and both distrustful, nevertheless Lexie stars to let go some of his distrust and anger.
Wintons’s skill with language and how it is used to encapsulate the character is on display here. Jaxie, is young, naïve, angry, wise, arrogant, wilful, driven, and open to the possibilities of a better future. A memorable young man.
“For the first time in me life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experience that I feel sorry for you.
But it wasn’t always like this. I been through fire to get
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here. I seen things and done things and had shit done to me you couldn’t barely credit. So be happy for me. And for fucksake don’t get in my way”.We don’t realise when this is occurring. Jaxie weaves his story between the now and then. The one constant is his anger.
“But shit was always being done to me, every single day, and sooner or later you figure you should be the one doing unto others. So by Year Four kids were scared of me. And I spose I liked that. “
Jaxie’s mother dies from Cancer has he now left alone with “Captain Wankbag. The Captain. Or just Cap for short. …That bucket of dog sick was a bastard to both of us, I wished he was dead.”
Jaxie has a pungent turn of phrase, descriptive, emotive, raw.
“And how did I end up poleaxed in a bin? The usual way, that’s how. He wouldn’t give you the sweat of his balls, the old Captain, but when it come to dishing out a bit of biff when you weren’t looking, well, then he was like fucking Santa.”
Circumstances put Jaxie on the road and on the run. Ill prepared he ventures into the scrub where meats Fintan MacGillis who may or may not have been many things. Their interaction at the old shepherds hut Fintan is living in is like an elaborate dance. A step forward here met by a side step there, a shuffle, a hop. These two damaged people start to heal each other. Neither admitting what was happening and both distrustful, nevertheless Lexie stars to let go some of his distrust and anger.
Wintons’s skill with language and how it is used to encapsulate the character is on display here. Jaxie, is young, naïve, angry, wise, arrogant, wilful, driven, and open to the possibilities of a better future. A memorable young man.
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LibraryThing member ElizabethCromb
An interesting concept but the language presented as illiterate and poorly spoken was off putting
LibraryThing member danieljayfriedman
Tim Winton tells The Shepherd’s Hut entirely through the voice of Jackson “Jaxie” Clackton, an uneducated, abused skateboarding teen, ”the hardarse the kids run clear of all over the shire”. Jaxie’s voice sounds unadulterated, raw, and entirely believable. His voice will likely remain
Jaxie begins his monologue by announcing his success: For the first time in me life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. / But it wasn’t always like this. I been through fire to get here. I seen things and done things and had shit done to me you couldn’t barely credit. So be happy for me. And for fucksake don’t get in my way.” The remainder of the The Shepherd’s Hut consists of Jaxie recounting what things he’s seen, what things he’s done, and what things have been done to him: the abuses suffered at the hands of his butcher father, his mother’s and father’s deaths, his love for his cousin, Lee, his flight from his home and his brutal wanderings through the ”penitential landscape” of the outback, and finally his arrival at the shepherd’s hut of Fintan MacGillis, a priest banished and perhaps defrocked for murky reasons. Jaxie’s voice carried The Shepherd’s Hut for me. I would have been a fully satisfied reader if Jaxie had wandered for forty days and forty nights, without Winton’s occasionally heavy-handed allusions, without Fintan’s theological musings, without the excitement of the ending, and without Jaxie’s ultimate redemption and recognition that ”it was enough to know what I was. An instrument of God.”
I hope that The Shepherd’s Hut makes its way to the 2018 Man Booker Prize longlist.
I thank Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing me an advance reader’s ebook of The Shepherd’s Hut.
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with me, just as Sammy’s Glaswegian voice in James Kelman’s 1994 Booker Prize winning How Late It Was, How Late remains with me years after I read it. Jaxie begins his monologue by announcing his success: For the first time in me life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. / But it wasn’t always like this. I been through fire to get here. I seen things and done things and had shit done to me you couldn’t barely credit. So be happy for me. And for fucksake don’t get in my way.” The remainder of the The Shepherd’s Hut consists of Jaxie recounting what things he’s seen, what things he’s done, and what things have been done to him: the abuses suffered at the hands of his butcher father, his mother’s and father’s deaths, his love for his cousin, Lee, his flight from his home and his brutal wanderings through the ”penitential landscape” of the outback, and finally his arrival at the shepherd’s hut of Fintan MacGillis, a priest banished and perhaps defrocked for murky reasons. Jaxie’s voice carried The Shepherd’s Hut for me. I would have been a fully satisfied reader if Jaxie had wandered for forty days and forty nights, without Winton’s occasionally heavy-handed allusions, without Fintan’s theological musings, without the excitement of the ending, and without Jaxie’s ultimate redemption and recognition that ”it was enough to know what I was. An instrument of God.”
I hope that The Shepherd’s Hut makes its way to the 2018 Man Booker Prize longlist.
I thank Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing me an advance reader’s ebook of The Shepherd’s Hut.
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LibraryThing member iadam
I received a free advance e-copy of this book and have chosen to write an honest and unbiased review. I have no personal affiliation with the author. Another great story by Tim Winton describing how brutal the Aussie Outback can be. A 16-year-old boy is on the run from the law. Life has made him
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wise beyond his years but he is still young and inexperienced. His one goal is to get to his cousin, Lee. He is rough as well as the Aussie slang that he uses throughout the book. At times I had to research what he meant. Couldn’t put it down. I never knew what was going to happen next. A violent and exciting ending. Tim Winton is a very descriptive writer. This book is well worth the read and I look forward to reading more from Tim Winton in the future. Show Less
LibraryThing member eyes.2c
the Rich canvas of Tim Winton!
Winton's opening instantly raises the tension. Justifiably angst ridden teenage Jaxi is heading for safety. His flight into the Australian outback 'bush' is grueling and I for one am amazed that he can even contemplate it, beginning as he does on foot. No one in their
Jaxie worked with his father Sid Clackton, aka Cap, the local butcher, a vicious alcoholic who has abused his wife and son all of Jaxie's life. When his mother dies with cancer, Jaxie is chained to his circumstances not through love as he had been, but through despair.
The thing is Jaxie arrives home to find Cap's body under the car, killed by the engine when a makeshift winch failed. Jaxie flees because he reckons people are going to say it was no accident, that he, Jaxie had killed Cap. Given that his father had just a few hours prior beaten the crap out of him, and that the only cop in town was Cap's friend, and as mean as his father to boot, Jaxie takes off.
Typical Winton reading! Hard, fast, and pithy with colloquialisms flying. As always his prose and descriptive writing is absolutely brilliant. If you've ever stepped though the Australian bush you'll recognize the landscape. If you haven't, imagining is made possible by a few words,
"I dug right into them scraggly trees. Stepping careful through the million sticks
and strips of bark in the shadows because getting snakebit wasn’t gunna be any
help."
I keep reading and am truly amazed by Winton's descriptions of the Outback, word pictures that bring to mind Fred William's paintings. Oh my! Just for this alone I'd give this book five stars. Let alone the story matter. This is a giant of a novel, unbridled and raw. I love it! And the small things, like Jaxie's binoculars, can be turning points.
Themes of violence, relationships, love, masculinity, and redemption are all heightened by the staccato delivery. Layer upon layer is pulled back as Jaxie's story unfolds and enriches in his meeting with Fintan MacGinnis, an Irish priest hermit type character in the middle of nowhere, all set against the brilliant light of the Western Australian landscape. An unapologetic view of life's harshness and relationships. I was fixated!
A NetGalley ARC
Winton's opening instantly raises the tension. Justifiably angst ridden teenage Jaxi is heading for safety. His flight into the Australian outback 'bush' is grueling and I for one am amazed that he can even contemplate it, beginning as he does on foot. No one in their
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right mind heads into the Australian Outback as precipitously as Jaxie does! Carrying a gun, a few supplies, binoculars and water, all that he's able to scramble together, Jaxie heads out from Monkton in Western Australia north to Magnet to find his cousin and girlfriend Lee. His only friend. The only one who gets him.Jaxie worked with his father Sid Clackton, aka Cap, the local butcher, a vicious alcoholic who has abused his wife and son all of Jaxie's life. When his mother dies with cancer, Jaxie is chained to his circumstances not through love as he had been, but through despair.
The thing is Jaxie arrives home to find Cap's body under the car, killed by the engine when a makeshift winch failed. Jaxie flees because he reckons people are going to say it was no accident, that he, Jaxie had killed Cap. Given that his father had just a few hours prior beaten the crap out of him, and that the only cop in town was Cap's friend, and as mean as his father to boot, Jaxie takes off.
Typical Winton reading! Hard, fast, and pithy with colloquialisms flying. As always his prose and descriptive writing is absolutely brilliant. If you've ever stepped though the Australian bush you'll recognize the landscape. If you haven't, imagining is made possible by a few words,
"I dug right into them scraggly trees. Stepping careful through the million sticks
and strips of bark in the shadows because getting snakebit wasn’t gunna be any
help."
I keep reading and am truly amazed by Winton's descriptions of the Outback, word pictures that bring to mind Fred William's paintings. Oh my! Just for this alone I'd give this book five stars. Let alone the story matter. This is a giant of a novel, unbridled and raw. I love it! And the small things, like Jaxie's binoculars, can be turning points.
Themes of violence, relationships, love, masculinity, and redemption are all heightened by the staccato delivery. Layer upon layer is pulled back as Jaxie's story unfolds and enriches in his meeting with Fintan MacGinnis, an Irish priest hermit type character in the middle of nowhere, all set against the brilliant light of the Western Australian landscape. An unapologetic view of life's harshness and relationships. I was fixated!
A NetGalley ARC
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LibraryThing member buttsy1
Nobody writes anti-heroes better than Tim Winton!
LibraryThing member ozzer
Tim Winton sets THE SHEPHERD'S HUT in the awful salt lands of Western Australia to explore some large themes. This place punishes those who dare to enter it. Winton’s narrator, 17 year-old Jaxie Clackton, sums it up thusly: “the kind of country that’d boil your insides dry in a day.” “a
Jaxie is a young man who has been abused and now finds himself isolated, both figuratively and literally. His abusive stepfather has died in an accident and Jaxie is sure that he will be blamed. “They’ll say I kicked the jack out from under the roo bar and crushed his head like a pig melon.” “It all points to me.” So he runs to the only person who he has left to care about, his cousin Lee. Fearing that their relationship would become sexual, her parents have separated the two teenagers. To get to Lee, Jaxie must cross the salt lands. During his trek, Winton gives us Jaxie’s backstory and worldview using an internal monologue peppered with a lot of clever Aussie slang. “Some nights there was so much feeling in me head I was glad it couldn’t get out.” “You could burn a skyscraper down with the what’s in me.”
In his travels, Jaxie meets Fintan MacGillis, a defrocked Catholic priest who has been banished to this godforsaken place for some unspecified disgrace. They develop an uneasy relationship that Winton uses to challenge Jaxie’s potential for transcendence. “He talked so . . . much it was like a junkpile he chucked at you.” For his part, Fintan insists he is no “pedo” and denigrates Jaxie by referring to him as the “wild colonial boy.” Clearly both characters are outcasts in need of some form of deliverance. One anticipates that they will find it in each other, but this may be overly optimistic. Unfortunately, a rather abrupt ending that seems to come out of the blue mars the novel. Also one wishes that Winton had developed the relationship between Jaxie and Fintan more fully. Can Jaxie rise to the challenge or will he run away again? This and most of the interesting questions Winton raises with Jaxie remain unresolved in the end. He wonders: “What does that make me? Someone you won’t see coming, that’s what. Something you can’t hardly imagine.”
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place so empty a fella’s thoughts come back from it as echoes.” “Everything you saw and touched out there looked like tetanus waiting to bite your arse.” This is the backdrop Winton uses to muse about what it takes to survive and hope when life is stripped bare; the various ways manhood can be expressed; how the young sometimes can be forced to grow up too fast; and how violence will shape character.Jaxie is a young man who has been abused and now finds himself isolated, both figuratively and literally. His abusive stepfather has died in an accident and Jaxie is sure that he will be blamed. “They’ll say I kicked the jack out from under the roo bar and crushed his head like a pig melon.” “It all points to me.” So he runs to the only person who he has left to care about, his cousin Lee. Fearing that their relationship would become sexual, her parents have separated the two teenagers. To get to Lee, Jaxie must cross the salt lands. During his trek, Winton gives us Jaxie’s backstory and worldview using an internal monologue peppered with a lot of clever Aussie slang. “Some nights there was so much feeling in me head I was glad it couldn’t get out.” “You could burn a skyscraper down with the what’s in me.”
In his travels, Jaxie meets Fintan MacGillis, a defrocked Catholic priest who has been banished to this godforsaken place for some unspecified disgrace. They develop an uneasy relationship that Winton uses to challenge Jaxie’s potential for transcendence. “He talked so . . . much it was like a junkpile he chucked at you.” For his part, Fintan insists he is no “pedo” and denigrates Jaxie by referring to him as the “wild colonial boy.” Clearly both characters are outcasts in need of some form of deliverance. One anticipates that they will find it in each other, but this may be overly optimistic. Unfortunately, a rather abrupt ending that seems to come out of the blue mars the novel. Also one wishes that Winton had developed the relationship between Jaxie and Fintan more fully. Can Jaxie rise to the challenge or will he run away again? This and most of the interesting questions Winton raises with Jaxie remain unresolved in the end. He wonders: “What does that make me? Someone you won’t see coming, that’s what. Something you can’t hardly imagine.”
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LibraryThing member adrianburke
Come on, guys (and fellow reviewers) this is mostly well-told but over revved hokum. Kid’s lit really.
LibraryThing member Amysuzannej
The main character of the book is a young man living in a version of reality that is shaped by the brutality and indifference of the people who raised him. It took me a few months after finishing the book to digest the events of it because, while my life has not been perfect, I am a female in
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America and this is about someone growing up in the Australian desert, being pushed into a violent life that is based on survival and machismo. The author did an excellent job of helping me have some empathy for the character. He also created a story that was engaged me and kept me wanting to read more. Show Less
LibraryThing member oldblack
I'm the first to admit that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but to me this is basically a boys' adventure story. I was somewhat disappointed. I heard about the basic plot and decided I wouldn't read it, but then I heard Winton interviewed about this book and it sounded intriguing and
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there were plenty of good reviews. Unfortunately, mine is not one of those. Tim Winton has written quite a few books for kids & teenagers, and this seems to really belong in that category although the publisher probably doesn't dare to market it that way because of the 'language' issues. It's got lots of Australiana, too, and I am aware that this can add a certain appeal to a particular group of readers (probably American) who find Australian culture to be quaintly interesting. I'm not in that group either. Jaxie's voice didn't fit with people I encounter and I found him and a number of plot elements rather unbelievable. I guess I was hoping for an insightful and optimistic study of masculinity and its possibilities in the 21st century. I didn't find any such inspiration here. All that being said, I didn't ever doubt that I would finish the book. As a simple 20th century boy's adventure it had plenty of momentum to keep me reading to the end, but I finished it feeling distinctly unsatisfied. Show Less
LibraryThing member technodiabla
Jaxie, a troubled teen, takes off across Western Australia and finds much adventure and enlightenment.
Took a bit for me to get into the swing of the Aussie slang, but I did find the insults and cursing amusing and colorful. The story is serious, but told in a campy fun way. Like the lovechild of
Took a bit for me to get into the swing of the Aussie slang, but I did find the insults and cursing amusing and colorful. The story is serious, but told in a campy fun way. Like the lovechild of
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Clockwork Orange and On the Road. I really enjoyed it and devoured it in about 3 days. Show Less
LibraryThing member LARA335
Stunning evocation of a brutalised boy running away into the australian outback. A sense of foreboding throughout, and a powerful characterisation of Jaxie, this complex, angry, lonely boy looking for peace. Harsh, violent, compassionate & moving.
LibraryThing member devilish2
The story is told by Jaxie, young teenager. It's mostly his recounting what is in his head and his thoughts about the his past, his mother, his stepfather, his cousin Lee, and Fintan McGillas, the guy at the shepherd's hut. His resilience and response to the landscape are notable. It feels like not
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a lot happens, but it's not slow moving. Jaxie's voice is well captured, as is Fintan's. Show Less
LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate
I am going to digress a bit on this one as I just read that it is being criticised for the main characters being only male and the ngative way the few women characters are portrayed. I am aware of the Me Too movement but I am stunned when I read someone telling an author either how they should have
Jesus Christ! it is fiction for fuck sake. It is not real! It requires an imagination not a fucking checklist of permissible characters. Grow up and write your own book to show all us dumb fucks how it should be done. I dare you!
Now to this very fine book.
One of the things I love about Tim Winton’s writing is how he brings the country and its people alive. I am in Oz right now as I write this and unless you have been here it is very hard to describe the immenseness, dryness and specificness of this country. There is no shortage of bad people here and a lot of space to bury bodies. His combination of bad people and huge dry open spaces is put together so skilfully I am looking out for these people as I drive along. Any ute with a good covering a red dust surely is driven by a psychopath who has just buried a few in the outback.
This is a fraught narrative, more a stream of semi-consciousness than a well told tale. A meeting of opposites in a place that just wants people to die.
Last time I was here the police were digging up an area where a man had buried a dozen or more hitchhikers before he died and then his nephew took over the “family business” and buried eight or nine more. Meanwhile just down the road the police were trying to catch a father and son who had been on the run for around three and a half years obviously getting aided by people as they are chased across the state. It’s that kind of country and it takes a massive talent to get even close to capturing the essence of this place. Thank you Mr Winton
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written their or how their book fails because it doesn’t contain certain items from an agenda. I have also read how white people cannot write authentically about black people, men about women and so on.Jesus Christ! it is fiction for fuck sake. It is not real! It requires an imagination not a fucking checklist of permissible characters. Grow up and write your own book to show all us dumb fucks how it should be done. I dare you!
Now to this very fine book.
One of the things I love about Tim Winton’s writing is how he brings the country and its people alive. I am in Oz right now as I write this and unless you have been here it is very hard to describe the immenseness, dryness and specificness of this country. There is no shortage of bad people here and a lot of space to bury bodies. His combination of bad people and huge dry open spaces is put together so skilfully I am looking out for these people as I drive along. Any ute with a good covering a red dust surely is driven by a psychopath who has just buried a few in the outback.
This is a fraught narrative, more a stream of semi-consciousness than a well told tale. A meeting of opposites in a place that just wants people to die.
Last time I was here the police were digging up an area where a man had buried a dozen or more hitchhikers before he died and then his nephew took over the “family business” and buried eight or nine more. Meanwhile just down the road the police were trying to catch a father and son who had been on the run for around three and a half years obviously getting aided by people as they are chased across the state. It’s that kind of country and it takes a massive talent to get even close to capturing the essence of this place. Thank you Mr Winton
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LibraryThing member ElizabethCromb
Very well written from the perspective of an uneducated 15 year old. When I first read this it was of-putting but on second reading it reflected the character very accurately and I became accustomed to it. The language is consistent all the way. The story is touching, delving into issues of
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domestic violence, child neglect, paedophilia in the Church and human relations in general. Show Less
LibraryThing member zmagic69
Tim Winton is an excellent author but you should definitely read some of his other books before trying to read The Shepherds Hut.
This book is basically a 21st century version of Huckleberry Finn narrated by a 15 year old who is a complete lunatic, who has had a horrible childhood. It takes place in
But
The book is definitely worth reading.
This book is basically a 21st century version of Huckleberry Finn narrated by a 15 year old who is a complete lunatic, who has had a horrible childhood. It takes place in
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Western Australia, it involved a disgraced Catholic Priest and some other not for the kids subjects, and the use of Australian slang and colloquialisms is very heavy. Making it a challenge to get through at times.But
The book is definitely worth reading.
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Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2020)
New South Wales Premier's Literary Award (Shortlist — 2019)
Australian Book Industry Awards (Shortlist — Literary Fiction — 2019)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2019)
Queensland Literary Awards (Finalist — Fiction — 2018)
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