Eyrie

Description

Tom Keely's reputation is in ruins. And that's the upside. Divorced and unemployed, he's lost faith in everything precious to him. Holed up in a grim highrise, cultivating his newfound isolation, Keely looks down at a society from which he's retired hurt and angry. He's done fighting the good fight, and well past caring. But even in his seedy flat, ducking the neighbours, he's not safe from entanglement. All it takes is an awkward encounter in the lobby. A woman from his past, a boy the likes of which he's never met before. Two strangers leading a life beyond his experience and into whose orbit he falls despite himself. What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times - funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting. Inhabited by unforgettable characters, Eyrie asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing.

Tim Winton has published twenty-five books for adults and children. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music).

*Starred Review* "[A] beautifully written powerful ninth novel . . . [Winton's] an absurdly good writer, with not only the proverbial eye for detail but also a facility for rendering each detail in an original way. Winton is ambitious; this is a state-of-the-nation novel about a world run amok . . . this is a fascinating, thought-provoking book." --"Publishers Weekly """Eyrie" is a fine work by any standard. It tackles myths of prosperity and success in a way that is not always comfortable, but that stirs deep thought. It is rich in compassion and affectionate towards the unlovely. It has a strong belief that no journey ends at the halfway mark. "Eyrie" is a novel for which our culture has been in urgent need." --Michael McGirr, "The Age" (Australia) "["Eyrie"] bears witness to how the sprawling suburban world of this older generation, so often perched on the edge of wilder natural landscapes, has been tidied up, boxed in, the ecology of childhood imagination narrowed to PlayStation and satellite dish. Mostly though, it is a clear-eyed yet compassionate depiction of the underclass that lives off the crumbs of the resource boom . . . However elaborate your analysis of "Eyrie," the novel stands, like all of the author's work, on its ability to marry sophistication and simplicity. Page by page it is an engrossing novel; the reader is moved and enraged in equal measure by the plain human story of Keely and his beautiful, battered adoptive family. You long for the good guy to win. You pray and ache for a fresh start for them all. And, as ever, it is couched in the prose of a writer on whom nothing is lost, for whom the tiniest local detail bears an epiphanic charge . . . 'Bravo, ' thinks Keely, 'f . . king brava.' On finishing "Eyrie," I felt much the same." --Geordie Williamson, "The Australian " Praise for "Breath" "Stunning in the depth of its audacity . . . Limitlessly beautiful prose." --"The Washington Post Book World ""Darkly exhilara ""Eyrie" is a fine work by any standard. It tackles myths of prosperity and success in a way that is not always comfortable, but that stirs deep thought. It is rich in compassion and affectionate towards the unlovely. It has a strong belief that no journey ends at the halfway mark. "Eyrie" is a novel for which our culture has been in urgent need." --Michael McGirr, "The Age" (Australia) "["Eyrie"] bears witness to how the sprawling suburban world of this older generation, so often perched on the edge of wilder natural landscapes, has been tidied up, boxed in, the ecology of childhood imagination narrowed to PlayStation and satellite dish. Mostly though, it is a clear-eyed yet compassionate depiction of the underclass that lives off the crumbs of the resource boom . . . However elaborate your analysis of "Eyrie", the novel stands, like all of the author's work, on its ability to marry sophistication and simplicity. Page by page it is an engrossing novel; the reader is moved and enraged in equal measure by the plain human story of Keely and his beautiful, battered adoptive family. You long for the good guy to win. You pray and ache for a fresh start for them all. And, as ever, it is couched in the prose of a writer on whom nothing is lost, for whom the tiniest local detail bears an epiphanic charge . . . 'Bravo, ' thinks Keely, 'f . . king brava.' On finishing "Eyrie", I felt much the same." --Geordie Williamson, "The Australian " Praise for "Breath" "Stunning in the depth of its audacity . . . Limitlessly beautiful prose." --"The Washington Post Book World ""Darkly exhilarating . . . A tautly gorgeous meditation on the inescapable human addiction to 'the monotony of drawing breath, ' whether you want to or not." --"The New York Times Book Review " "Both a hymn to the beauty of flying on water and a sober assessment of the costs of losing one's balance, in every sense of the word." --"The New Yorker"