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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.
These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
Adaptations
-
The Turning
2008
single work
drama
'Spanning three generations from the 70s to the present, 'The Turning' is about twists and turns of all kinds - changes of heart, slow awakenings, nasty surprises and accidents, resolutions made or broken.
'Taking us deep into the emotional lives of the Lang family with their demons, disappointments, rivalries and crippling obsessions, this powerful new drama explores a vision of life lived in the vast Western Australian landscape.' (2008 Perth International Arts Festival promotional note)
-
form
y
The Turning
( dir. Benedict Andrews
et. al. )agent
Australia
:
Arenamedia Pty Ltd
,
2013
Z1912300
2013
selected work
film/TV
'Seventeen extraordinary Australian directors respond to the hauntingly beautiful collection of short stories by Tim Winton. Spanning almost 30 years, these stories provide windows into the lives of men and women in the small coastal town of Angelus. Linking and overlapping, the stories create a stunning and disturbing portrait of a small coastal community in Western Australia. As befits the title of the film, the stories are preoccupied with the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people's lives. Relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.'
Source: Screen Australia
Notes
-
Dedication: for Ken Kelso
-
Epigraph: And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
(T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday) -
Included on the Notable Books list for the 2006 Kiriyama Prize.
Contents
-
Big World,
single work
short story
'Hitting the road in a Kombi that's like a garden shed on wheels.' (Journeys, p.33)
- Abbreviation, single work short story (p. 17-36)
- Aquifer, single work short story (p. 37-53)
- Damaged Goods, single work short story (p. 55-65)
- Small Mercies, single work short story (p. 67-99)
- On Her Knees, single work short story (p. 101-112)
- Cockleshell, single work short story (p. 113-132)
- The Turning, single work short story (p. 133-161)
- Sand, single work short story (p. 163-169)
- Family, single work short story (p. 171-187)
- Long, Clear View, single work short story (p. 189-204)
- Reunion, single work short story humour (p. 205-215)
- Commission, single work short story (p. 217-233)
- Fog, single work short story (p. 235-249)
- Boner McPharlin's Moll, single work short story (p. 251-292)
- Immunity, single work short story (p. 293-298)
- Defender, single work short story (p. 299-317)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Stories for Hyperlinked Times : The Short Story Cycle and Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 9 October 2019;'We live hyperlinked lives, expected to be switched on and logged in 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Time is a dwindling resource, multitasking is our default setting. We’re constantly reading: online articles, emails, social media posts. But for many of us, this dip-in, dip-out reading feels dissatisfying. We crave deeper engagement.' (Introduction)
-
The Fiction of Tim Winton : Relational Ecology in an Unsettled Land
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , November vol. 17 no. 2017; (p. 63-71) Complicating the processes of belonging in place, for non-Indigenous Australians, is the growing realization that they live in a huge, diverse land, a place in which they are not native. The fiction of popular Anglo-Saxon Australian novelist Tim Winton echoes the understanding of poet Judith Wright, for whom “two strands – the love of the land we have invaded and the guilt of the invasion – have become part of me. It is a haunted country” (Wright 1991: 30). This essay will explore Winton’s novels in which there is a pervasive sense of unease and loss experienced by the central characters, in relation to place and land. Winton’s characters – Queenie Cookson and her traumatic witnessing of the barbaric capture and flaying of whales; Fish Lamb’s near-drowning in the sea, and Lu Fox’s quest for refuge in the wilderness, prophet-like, after the tragedy of his family’s death – are all written with a haunting sense of white unsettlement and displacement, where such natural forces – the sea and its creatures, the land’s distances and risks – confront and re-form the would-be dominators. -
Australia : An Inescapable Cultural Paradigm? Cross- and Transcultural Elements in Tim Winton’s Fiction
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia , vol. 7 no. 2 2016; (p. 30-40) 'The article considers Tim Winton’s fiction in terms of its cross- and transcultural character. Despite the fact that local Australian settings permeate the writer’s narratives, Winton creates an imaginary space that is both local and transnational in terms of its quality of the domestic culture, which Winton extends beyond its original field of practice. Winton achieves the transcultural quality of his fiction through transgressions and boundary breaking that are possible due to his frequent reworking of the traditional Australian themes and concepts of the unknown, supernatural, mystical, numinous and sacred, exploitation of leitmotifs of journey, transit and in-betweenness, use of cross-cultural symbols as well as various utopian and dystopian topoi such as Arcadia and Heimat.' (Publication abstract) -
Sarah Armstrong : Books That Changed Me
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: Brisbane Times , 9 September 2016; 'Sarah Armstrong has been a journalist and producer for ABC radio and Foreign Correspondent on ABC TV. Her first novel, Salt Rain, was shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. Her third novel, Promise (Macmillan), is about a woman who runs away with her neighbour's son after she suspects he is being abused. She lives in northern NSW with her husband, the writer Alan Close. ...' -
Get Shorty
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-mail , 29 November 2014; (p. 10)
— Review of The Turning 2004 selected work short story ; Merciless Gods 2014 selected work short story ; Australia's Best Unknown Stories : And Tales You Thought You Knew 2014 anthology short story ; Springtime : A Ghost Story 2014 single work novel 'Short stories have a long life ahead of them...'
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Short, Not Quite Sweet
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 2 October 2004; (p. 11)
— Review of The Turning 2004 selected work short story -
Facing Life on the Margins
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 2 October 2004; (p. 4)
— Review of The Turning 2004 selected work short story -
Grim World That Shines with Life
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 2-3 October 2004; (p. 10)
— Review of The Turning 2004 selected work short story -
Turning Point of Maturity in Winton's Gifts
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 2 October 2004; (p. 17)
— Review of The Turning 2004 selected work short story -
Winton Turns on the Humanity
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 9 October 2004; (p. 6)
— Review of The Turning 2004 selected work short story -
Where Do I Go From Here?
2004
single work
biography
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 25 September 2004; (p. 22-27) -
To the West of Winton
2004
single work
column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 2 October 2004; (p. 10-12) -
Your View
2005
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 19 February 2005; (p. 2) -
Ten-Year Walk Down Memory Lane Brings Home the Bacon
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 24 May 2005; (p. 7) - y Mind the Country : Tim Winton's Fiction Crawley : University of Western Australia , 2006 Z1286107 2006 single work criticism
Awards
- 2005 winner Queensland Premier's Literary Awards — Best Fiction Book
- 2005 shortlisted Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Inaugural award
- 2005 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
- 2005 commended Commonwealth Writers Prize — South East Asia and South Pacific Region — Best Book
- 2004 joint winner Colin Roderick Award Announced in 2005. Joint winner with Alan Wearne for The Lovemakers.
- Coast,
- Southwest Western Australia, Western Australia,