Adrian Turpin
Redemption Songs
Here are two things to know about Jaxie Clackton, the unstoppable teenage hero of Tim Winton’s new novel. He once bashed a sackful of kittens to death but, at heart, he’s a decent boy. That’s the paradox central to The Shepherd’s Hut, an exhilarating and surprisingly uplifting exploration of what its author calls ‘toxic masculinity’, set against the awe-inspiring landscapes of Western Australia’s gold fields and saltpans.
Winton has written a book about finding hope in the most extreme circumstances, and Jaxie’s situation is nothing if not extreme. Mourning his mother, he lives in fear of his father (or Captain Wankbag as he calls him),
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Things began to go wrong between Mr and Mrs Eliot almost immediately. Ostensibly the problem was Vivien’s mysteriously fluctuating health. It would be easy to reduce the Eliot marriage simply to a catalogue of Viv’s medical crises.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/marriage-made-in-hell
'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions