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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
-
Prodigal Forgiveness in Tim Winton’s The Turning
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
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)
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Screening the Australian Novel, 1971-2020
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023; -
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)
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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.
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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 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,