The Western Australian small town of Angelus is classic Winton country. With neither the bright lights and distractions of the city, nor the rural reassurances of the country, people live out lives in the shadow of the meat-packing plant, the trailer park, a dying fishing industry. There is drinking, drug-taking, violence, and depression. There’s also intense loneliness, misunderstanding, and a whole raft of fractured families. But if taking a trip to Angelus (a fictional place, by the way) for a series of connected short stories where the same characters crop up viewed from different angles doesn’t sound like much fun, think again. As a writer Winton has an enormous sense of humanity, and an abiding sympathy for his characters. He also writes with as subtle a touch as you could wish for. Through his eyes we examine a collection of personal turning points, crucial reassessments of lives that have gone wrong, or which might have been different. In the opening story, ‘Big World', the narrator reflects on an adolescent escape from Angelus which didn’t work out, and a future which is both better and worse than might have been hoped for – and which is, either way, ‘unimaginable’. Peter Dyson in ‘Small Mercies’ also returns to the town, only to be confronted by an ex-girlfriend whose life forces him to imagine what might have been. Winton’s fascination is with the moment of realisation, most frequently a crux arrived at in middle age which forces individuals to look back at their adolescence and those moments or people which they left behind, or screwed up, or wish they'd handled differently. Crucially, in most cases, a potential to make up for things and start to repair the damage follows hard on these biting reassessments.
Tim Winton
The Turning
Picador 2003 hbk £16.99 ISBN 0-330-43830-1
Cathy Hopkins
Mates, Dates & Inflatable Bras
Lucy is at a turning point in her life, and suddenly she seems beset by problems. She doesn't know who she is and what she wants to be. Her best friend Izzy has become friends with the glamorous new girl Nesta and Lucy feels left out. And while Nesta and Izzy look sixteen, Lucy, at fourteen, can easily pass for a twelve-year-old. Something has to change .
Reading age from 13, interest level from 13
Piccadilly Press 2001 hbk £9.99 ISBN 1-85340-638-4
Piccadilly Press 2001 pbk £5.99 ISBN 1-85340-633-3
