The Shepherd's Hut

By: Tim Winton

Narrated by: Kate Mulvany

Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Tim Winton is Australia's most decorated and beloved novelist. Short-listed twice for the Booker Prize and the winner of a record four Miles Franklin Literary Awards for Best Australian Novel, he has a gift for language virtually unrivaled among writers in English. His work is both tough and tender, primordial and new - always revealing the raw, instinctual drives that lure us together and rend us apart.

In The Shepherd's Hut, Winton crafts the story of Jaxie Clackton, a brutalized rural youth who flees from the scene of his father's violent death and strikes out for the vast wilds of Western Australia. All he carries with him is a rifle and a waterjug. All he wants is peace and freedom. But surviving in the harsh saltlands alone is a savage business. And once he discovers he's not alone out there, all Jaxie's plans go awry. He meets a fellow exile, the ruined priest Fintan MacGillis, a man he's never certain he can trust, but on whom his life will soon depend.

The Shepherd's Hut is a thrilling tale of unlikely friendship and yearning, at once brutal and lyrical, from one of our finest storytellers.

©2018 Tim Winton (P)2018 W. F. Howes

What is all the fuss about?

Maybe you have to be an Aussie in order to love this book. I love Australia, but the book escapes me. The narration of Kate Mulvany is decent, I suppose. By an hour or so I stopped noticing it, so that I heard it as regular English. My primary problem was with the plot. The protagonist is a young man of sixteen who escapes a brutal father and walks for several hundred miles with very little gear. He has a friend who becomes his girlfriend. He suffers from hunger and thirst. He meets a priest. I just don't have the sense that the book is going anywhere, to be concrete about it. Nothing much propels the plot. There is no humor, which is a loss, as Aussie humor can be outrageously funny and creative in a way that American humor doesn't reach. As an example of this, my favorite movie is Babe. You really should see it. I know that it has nothing to do with this book, but still.
I understand that Tim Winton has won a number of awards in Australia, and from this sample I am not at all tempted to read any of his other books. It just wasn't fun, which it certainly doesn't have to be, but it wasn't entertaining, and it didn't teach me anything, it didn't ask any of the big questions, it just didn't keep me reading. I gave up at halfway through. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Kate Mulvany interprets Tim Winton in a spectacular fashion!

Tim Winton has the best way with words, with characters, with plot. What an amazingly beautiful book. “I am in awe,” as Finton would have said.

Stunning!

I was lucky enough to win this book on Goodreads. I knew from the first few pages that it was not going to disappoint, but Jaxie’s slang took some getting used to. And then I thought an audio version of the book might be just what I needed. I am so happy I spent a credit to get this book. Kate Mulvany’s narration is absolutely fantastic! I wasn’t sure what to think when I saw the narrator was female, but she is a gifted narrator and was fully convincing as a 16 year old boy.

I couldn’t recommend this book highly enough. The writing is beautiful and authentic, and very evocative. I have three other books by Tim Winton that have been sitting on my shelves for years and now I wonder what took me so long to discover him. I will most definitely be reading more of him. In the meantime, here’s hoping that the Shepherd’s Hut will make the Booker longlist this year. It is well deserving and a book that will stay with me for a long time.

no story! no dialog. just a diatribe/monolog.

I liked the book at first and in spite of a lot of cursing, I still thought it would be good. unfortunately, the diatribe just continues.

Gritty, lyrical, gripping tale

Nobody writes like Tim Winton does - it’s poetic, yes, but in a tough and hard-grained way. This story is seemingly simple- a troubled young man goes on the run in the Australian wilds - but it explores profound issues. The language is raw and real. And the narrator does a splendid job. Highly recommended.