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y separately published work icon The Turning selected work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2004... 2004 The Turning
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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 Bill McCluskey , 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 separately published work icon The Turning Tim Winton , ( 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

* Contents derived from the Sydney, New South Wales,:Picador , 2004 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Big World, Tim Winton , single work short story
'Hitting the road in a Kombi that's like a garden shed on wheels.' (Journeys, p.33)
(p. 1-15)
Abbreviation, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 17-36)
Aquifer, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 37-53)
Damaged Goods, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 55-65)
Small Mercies, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 67-99)
On Her Knees, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 101-112)
Cockleshell, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 113-132)
The Turning, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 133-161)
Sand, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 163-169)
Family, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 171-187)
Long, Clear View, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 189-204)
Reunion, Tim Winton , single work short story humour (p. 205-215)
Commission, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 217-233)
Fog, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 235-249)
Boner McPharlin's Moll, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 251-292)
Immunity, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 293-298)
Defender, Tim Winton , single work short story (p. 299-317)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2004 .
      image of person or book cover 2612789318023059103.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 317p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 1st October 2004
      ISBN: 0330421387, 0330421395 (deckle edged ed.)
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2004 .
      image of person or book cover 4318843955703744954.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 317p.
      Reprinted: 2005 , 2006
      ISBN: 0330422081
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Charles Scribner's Sons ,
      2005 .
      image of person or book cover 620154095010163519.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Alternative title: The Turning: New Stories
      Extent: 321p.
      ISBN: 0743276930
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Picador ,
      2006 .
      image of person or book cover 857434515016626859.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 317p.
      ISBN: 9780330441353
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2014 .
      image of person or book cover 7426569657022709163.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 336p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 1 October 2014
      ISBN: 9780143568834
Alternative title: Angelus
Language: French
    • Paris,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Rivages ,
      2006 .
      image of person or book cover 4532008989712800080.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 324p.
      ISBN: 274361580X

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Prodigal Forgiveness in Tim Winton’s The Turning Paul Mitchell , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 68 no. 2 2023; (p. 161-174)
'In 2004, celebrated Australian author Tim Winton released The Turning, a popular, award-winning, and critically acclaimed short story cycle1. Winton is renowned for his attention to issues of masculinity in his fiction (O’Reilly 2014) (Grogan 2014) — and non-fiction (Winton, The Masculine Mystique 1994) — and for being a Christian who writes about religious themes (Dixon 2005) (Grogan 2014, 203). Whether intentionally or not, I believe Winton brings religious themes and masculinity issues together in The Turning through a reframing of the Bible’s Prodigal Son parable from chapter fifteen of Luke’s Gospel.' (Introduction)
Parochial Canons : Teaching Australian Literature in Western Australia Claire Jones , Patricia Dowsett , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , 10 August vol. 23 no. 1 2023;

'In recent years, various studies have drawn attention to a lack of Australian literature being taught in secondary classrooms in Australia, with these findings often attributed to teachers’ minimal experience of Australian texts during their senior secondary and tertiary education. This paper draws on a state-wide study of texts studied in Year 12 English and Literature classrooms in Western Australia in 2018, which revealed that Australian works, and particularly Western Australian texts, were popular inclusions for study. The externally examined English course in WA not having a prescribed text list, yet this condition of text list expansion does not necessarily ensure that a wider variety of texts will be studied in schools. This paper explores some possible explanations for this situation by referring to sites of sociability and to the work of John Guillory on canonicity and cultural capital (1993), to consider the impact of a parochial canon on Western Australian English subjects.' (Publication abstract)

Stories for Hyperlinked Times : The Short Story Cycle and Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs Amelia Walker , 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 Lyn McCredden , 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 Tomasz Gadzina , 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)
Short, Not Quite Sweet Chris Brice , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 2 October 2004; (p. 11)

— Review of The Turning Tim Winton , 2004 selected work short story
Facing Life on the Margins Peter Pierce , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 2 October 2004; (p. 4)

— Review of The Turning Tim Winton , 2004 selected work short story
Grim World That Shines with Life A. P. Riemer , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 2-3 October 2004; (p. 10)

— Review of The Turning Tim Winton , 2004 selected work short story
Turning Point of Maturity in Winton's Gifts Robert Hefner , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 2 October 2004; (p. 17)

— Review of The Turning Tim Winton , 2004 selected work short story
Winton Turns on the Humanity Rod Moran , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 9 October 2004; (p. 6)

— Review of The Turning Tim Winton , 2004 selected work short story
Where Do I Go From Here? Janet Hawley , 2004 single work biography
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 25 September 2004; (p. 22-27)
To the West of Winton Griffin Longley , 2004 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 2 October 2004; (p. 10-12)
Your View Barbara Baker , 2005 single work correspondence
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 19 February 2005; (p. 2)
Ten-Year Walk Down Memory Lane Brings Home the Bacon Angela Bennie , 2005 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 24 May 2005; (p. 7)
y separately published work icon Mind the Country : Tim Winton's Fiction Salhia Ben-Messahel , Crawley : University of Western Australia , 2006 Z1286107 2006 single work criticism

Awards

2005 winner Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Best Fiction Book
2005 shortlisted 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.
Last amended 29 Aug 2022 15:39:06
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