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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

When good neighbours become good friends: Eyrie by Tim Winton

21/4/2015

12 Comments

 
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Tom Keely has come down in the world. Two years ago he lost his marriage; a year ago his job as the public face of an environmental NGO, martyring himself as a whistleblower for a lost cause. Sealing himself off from former friends and colleagues in the sweltering heat of his apartment, waking up with a hangover from hell and a disturbing damp patch on the sitting-room carpet, the only “up” in his life seems to be the view over Fremantle, Western Australia, from his tenth floor balcony.

Mired in the wreckage of his life, Tom steers clear of the neighbours. But Gemma Buck, living alone with her six-year-old grandson, Kai, working nights stacking shelves in the supermarket, is persistent. After all, she recognises him from their childhood on Blackboy Crescent, where Tom’s dad, Neville, was the only adult who tried to calm her violent father, Tom’s parents subsequently taking in Gemma and her sister when their mother was hospitalised and their father imprisoned.


Kai is beguiling and, despite himself, Tom responds to his charms (p78-79):

he clamped the sheet of paper to the fridge with a magnet. At other people’s places – friends from work, people with kids – he’d always looked with an inner sneer at their fridge doors plastered in clumsy daubs. Everything their brats committed to paper was so special, so important it required immediate and prolonged display … And now here he was, chuffed to have it there. This peculiar burst of colour, this lovely intrusion.

The boy’s innocence, despite his troubled background, stands in stark contrast to the jaded politics that formed Tom’s working life (p74):

we lose. Not because we’re rubbish at it. That’s just how it works. We are meant to lose. And campaign and calculate all we like, the bulldozers still arrive, the agencies wash their hands, the media get their little flash of colour and it’s back to business as usual. We’re the soft story wedged in before the sports results.

Will Tom mend the broken boy? Will Kai mend the broken man? Will Tom and Gemma move beyond the memories of their childhood to forge a different kind of relationship? Tim Winton’s ninth novel begins as Nick Hornby’s About a Boy crossed with fellow Australian Peter Carey’s Amnesia, seasoned with Instructions for a Heatwave, cli-fi and later-life coming-of-age. It darkens and deepens through themes of family and masculinity (F) and alcoholic absences (The Good House) into a dangerous underground world beyond the reach of the law (The Glorious Heresies). While I appreciated both the lucid prose and engaging plot, I was most taken with Tim Winton’s unflinching examination of the potential for destructiveness within an unboundaried helping relationship (something Pat Barker addressed, less successfully in my opinion, in Border Crossing). One could hardly hope to find a more caring person than Tom’s mother, Doris, yet she tells her son (p313-4):

people sometimes confuse simple decency with investment. You help them, therefore you must love them, require something of them, desire them, need them. And then you’re expected to forsake everyone else for them …

Gemma made herself lovable in the way some needy kids do. To survive they cultivate you. They want so badly and they take compulsively. They learn to manipulate you. No-one can blame a little girl for seeking comfort. But I think I crossed a line somewhere, flattering myself, thinking I really could be her mother

Doris understands the importance of self-compassion, something Tom has yet to master (p289):

You’re trying to do the right thing, I know … But save yourself first, Tom. That’s something I do know, it’s what I’ve learnt. You save yourself, then you look to the others.

Lots here then to stimulate, challenge and entertain the principled reader. Thank you Picador books for my review copy.

Although never a fan myself, I can’t contemplate Australian neighbours without getting an earworm of the jingle from the successful soap, making this novel the ideal companion for linking to Charli Mills’ latest flash fiction prompt to compose a 99-word story about a nurturing neighbourly relationship. I’m afraid mine’s a bit cheeky:

Another bloody parcel? Working from home, I’m their unpaid concierge? Answering the doorbell kills my concentration. Stomach rumbling, I peer into the cavern of the fridge.

No time to trek to the shops for something healthy. Scarfing crisps and biscuits, I stare out the kitchen window. Must ask the neighbours to cut that tree back: it’s encroaching on my patch.

Funny, I never wondered what kind of tree. Now’s my chance to take a closer look. Reckon I'll take a bowl with me, a big one. There’s plums and pears beyond and strawberries. Perfect for a nutritious fruit salad.

Your comments welcome on post my review and flash. And, if you missed it yesterday, please judge my own forthcoming novel by its cover.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
12 Comments
Sandra Davies link
21/4/2015 10:26:52 am

Have skimmed rapidly over this because it's on my wishlist, awaiting the paperback. I loved Winton's 'Dirt Music' but haven't been quite so bowled over by anything else he's written - need to re-read.

Reply
Annecdotist
21/4/2015 12:05:23 pm

Thanks for visiting, Sandra. I haven't read that one but I loved Breath – though quite disturbing – and also The Riders. The paperback's out on Thursday so not long to wait!

Reply
sarah link
21/4/2015 05:11:03 pm

Hahaha! They ARE nurturing their neighbor...they just don't know it. :-) I had to pop over from Charli's to see this "naughty" flash that was supposed to be nice and nurturing. I took a fresh turn with mine, too. Oh, well. We can't help ourselves.

Be back to read the review--just wanted to see this flash you were talking about.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/4/2015 02:09:57 am

Thanks, Sarah. I did TRY to make it come out a bit nicer but, yeah, we have to write from the heart. Need to check yours out, I'm a bit behind with my blogligations right now.

Reply
Charli Mills
22/4/2015 12:13:55 am

"Answering the doorbell kills my concentration." Oh, I can relate but thankfully the UPS man doesn't intrude often. If he is helping himself to the neighbor's fruit, does that mean he's self-nurturing? Interesting book review. I felt hooked by the characters in just a few snippets.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/4/2015 02:13:35 am

Lucky for me most parcels that arrive here are a new book delivery – always happy to open the door to that! Sure, my character's self nurturing, which I suppose is a start …
Actually, the main thing we try to steal from our neighbours is not the fruit but the birds, competing with enticing seeds in the feeders, fortunately, the birds don't recognise boundaries between gardens.
Glad you like the sound of the novel – I'd certainly recommend you dip into Tim Winton if you haven't read any of his stuff yet.

Reply
Irene Waters link
24/4/2015 05:59:00 am

Love Tim Winton. He is the first person that made me understand the psyche of the surfer. Your naughty nurturing flash was great also. Were you going to share that fruit salad with your neighbours? :)

Reply
Annecdotist
24/4/2015 08:18:20 am

I know the novel you mean, Irene, agree, he's a fabulous writer.
Now wouldn't that make a good solution – to share the salad with the neighbours. Alas, I think it needs to be eaten fresh and they won't be back for ages yet!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
27/4/2015 07:01:18 am

Love your flash, Anne, especially the line about being their unpaid concierge. For a long time someone who you know, but who I won't mention by name, had all her packages and mail delivered here. While I didn't (don't) mind, I did find the flash and the interruption to concentration interesting from that point of view. I would greatly look forward to sharing in the fruit salad. Interesting though, I find that while I am usually the one to prepare it, everyone else likes to enjoy it! Fruit salad can be a little like the Little Red Hen's bread!
I am yet to read this Tim Winton book. I don't know why I have left it so long. I love his writing and have read a few including "Breath", which Irene mentions, "Dust" and "Cloud Street". All excellent stories. When I saw Winton interviewed about "Eyrie" I knew I had to read it. Thanks for reminding me of it.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/4/2015 10:34:10 am

Ha, I imagine taking in her parcels is only one of many things you've done for that Special Someone, but isn't she making the fruit salads now? Or are her culinary skills reserved for the vegetables?
Oh do read Eyrie. I imagine it's been out a bit longer in Australia but it's only out last week in the UK. Does he record his books, I wonder?

Reply
Norah Colvin link
4/6/2019 12:36:55 pm

I've just finished listening to Eyrie, Anne. It only took me four years to get to it. :) I thoroughly enjoyed it. I do love Winton's writing style. He has such an effective way of describing characters through events. He's a master of show don't tell. I love the way he revealed Keely's character little by little. He (Keely) certainly got himself all tangled up in complexities.
I enjoyed reading your review and agree with what you said. I was hoping you may have shared an opinion on the ending. I found it a bit confusing. I sought out some other reviews to find out what others thought but wasn't successful there either. Perhaps I need to think a little more on it myself. It would be a good one to discuss in a readers' circle.
He didn't read it, by the way, but the narrator was excellent.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
4/6/2019 03:48:58 pm

Sorry, I can hardly remember the story itself, never mind the ending! I skim read the last few pages of my copy, but no wiser. You need a book group. Mine's discussing Camus on Friday.

Reply



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