In July 2021, the Australian writers book group read books and short stories by Tim Winton.

Tim Winton was born in 1960 in Perth, Western Australia and grew up there. He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece, and currently lives in Western Australia. His writing covers a wide range, including novels, short stories, plays, children’s books, non-fiction, dramatisations, adaptations of his books for film scripts. He has a long list of awards.

More details of his work and awards are given on:

https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/tim-winton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Winton


The books we had collectively read were:

An Open Swimmer (1982)
Shallows (1984)
In the Winter Dark (1988)
Cloud St (1991)
Lands Edge (1993)
The Riders (1994)
Dirt Music (2001)
The Turning (2005)

Tim Winton’s use of language was described by us as stunning, delightful and inventive. His use of language well communicates his sense of place in the Western Australian landscape and its environment. He is known as an environmentalist in Australia and beyond. His writing brings alive the lives of people between the desert and the sea of the west coast, especially the lives of ordinary and working class people. His characters are often described as fractured.

The group discussed whether indigenous Australians were visible or not in his work. It was felt that he is aware of indigenous people and they are certainly there in ‘Cloud Street’ for instance – as projections and as shadows, which affect the present. When some of the family in ‘Cloud Street’ find that indigenous Australians / aborigines cannot vote, they find this very unfair. The group then discussed the extent to which Pākehā New Zealanders could write about Māori peoples lives and how visible Māori were to us growing up in the 1940-60s.