The Shepherd‘s Hut is more than a novel: it has the shape and pattern of a very Australian, very modern, epic.

Tim Winton can be hard on his characters. He drowned the Lambs’ favourite son, then only half gave him back. He sent Scully on a chase through Europe desperately looking for a woman who didn‘t want him. He made Pikelet seek redemption for the sins of others in the blood and guts of the ambulance service. But he really gives it to Jaxie Clackton. A dead mother. A violent, alcoholic father. A town that hates him. A love that humiliates him. And a name that almost means arsehole. Twice.

The Shepherd‘s Hut is more than a novel. Narrated in the first person, Jaxie’s journey through the desert has the shape and pattern of an epic. A very Australian, very modern, epic. Winton has a used a variety of genres in the past. Cloudstreet, with its short scenes, large cast and warmth, is a TV soap brought to the page. The Riders is a thriller whose quest and pace brings an almost unbearable anxiety to the love that is being chased. Abel’s friendship with a large fish in Blueback has the structure and rhythm of a fable.

In The Shepherd’s Hut, we meet Jaxie in medias res. He’s driving north in an exalted state:

When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going underneath me everything’s hell different. Like I’m in a fresh new world all slick and flat and easy. Even with the engine working up a howl and the wind flogging in the window the sounds are real soft and pillowy. Civilized I mean. Like you’re still on the earth but you don’t hardly notice it anymore.

This reverie is short-lived. We’re taken back to the start of his journey, to Monckton, a small, mean town on the edge of the desert where ‘there was no KFC or Subway’ and the options for entertainment are ‘a milkshake at the roadhouse, [or] check out the tip’. School and home life are miserable until Jaxie has his prayers shockingly answered:

… the ute was casting a shadow that no light was ever gonna make. A shadow doesn’t search for a drain like that. Shadows don’t have blowflies drowning in them.

The blood is his father’s and, fearful of being accused of his murder, Jaxie grabs a rifle and supplies and heads north, in the direction of Magnet and his cousin and muse, Lee. But he doesn’t make it. Instead he ends up in a place that is best described by its contradictions: a lake without water, a shepherd’s hut with no sheep, and a priest without a flock.

The priest, Fintan, has been out there for years and is ‘halfway tapped’. He’s a prisoner of sorts, but he doesn’t seem to mind his life. Every six months someone comes with supplies. He has books to read and a radio. He has a good memory for poetry and for songs, including ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’, which he sings as Jaxie arrives:

He was scarcely sixteen years of age when he left his father’s home,

And through Australia’s sunny clime a bushranger did roam.

He robbed those wealthy squatters, their stock he did destroy,

And a terror to Australia was the wild Colonial boy.

It takes time, but Fintan wins Jaxie’s trust and begins to mentor him. This is a familiar set-up from Winton; a boy being guided into manhood by a dubious older man. But, like Henry Watburn in That Eye the Sky or Sando in Breath, Fintan’s a good teacher as well as being a bit shifty. Jaxie is often impatient with Fintan’s nuanced, worldly views, but they are good lessons for a boy who has grown up in a small town on the edge of the desert. Fintan also has a convincing way of presenting big ideas tempered by his own regrets and failures.  Maybe there is a corollary to the cliché that those who can’t do, teach: it’s easier to accept lessons in goodness from someone who has made mistakes, and regrets them.

Fintan has been shaped, above all, by the teachings of the Catholic Church and these principles form the basis of his lessons for Jaxie. Having religion this central to the story is a change for Winton. Usually in his novels faith prevails as a gentle force that gives some comfort and guidance, while its problems and contradictions are dealt with wryly. When Lester Lamb in Cloudstreet discovers that the pig he was going to butcher speaks in tongues, his response is typical: ‘It’s always the miracles you don’t need.’

There is no wryness in The Shepherd’s Hut. The faults of religion, from real-world events to its philosophy, are dealt with directly. From the moment Jaxie realises that Fintan has been exiled from the church, he suspects it is because Fintan is a paedophile. Jaxie’s fierce anger about paedophilia arises despite there being no suggestion that he has been a victim of it; the injustice he feels is for others. When Fintan reveals that the punishment for paedophilia is to cover it up, and that the time and effort taken to keep him in the outback is about money, Jaxie is appalled.

Fintan identifies another weakness with Catholicism; its obsession with death. He describes how as a young man he sought to emulate the crucifixion of his leader:

Nowadays that strikes me as absurd and perverse, utterly monstrous. But I’m not such a good judge of monsters; I don’t know if the idea of a good death repels me now because it’s in itself repellent, or because I no longer have the courage to seek such a thing.

To Jaxie, the butcher’s son, death holds no such romance. He kills for food and for survival. He takes no pleasure in it, nor is he particularly repelled by it. Importantly, when Jaxie is present at a crucifixion, he doesn’t martyr the person crucified. He is impressed, but not exalted by what he has witnessed.

If this all sounds heavy going, it’s not. Winton has a happy knack of examining big ideas with enough humour not to make them didactic. For example, one of Fintan’s longest sermons is delivered while they are both shovelling a hole to be filled with their shit. And, as Fintan strains to refine his arguments, Jaxie observes: ‘For a bloke not doing any digging, he looked hard worked already.’

The philosophy is also counter-played by the physicality of Jaxie’s journey. Much of The Shepherd’s Hut‘s tension is created not through the discussion of ideas but through direct observation of character and landscape. Once again, Winton describes country well. He captures its beauty, but he doesn’t shy away from its ugliness, either, and is also able to show its hardness, its violence. And how violent we can be within it, too.

Norman Mailer said it takes a few years before great events seep into the unconscious and can be written as great novels. He didn’t claim to understand the process (‘It’s a spooky art’) but it seems to hold true.  All Quiet on The Western Front was first published in 1929. Catch-22 in 1961. The Emperor’s Children in 2006.

The public recognition of the abuse of children in institutions is one of the great events of the last 20 years and The Shepherd’s Hut is a great novel about this event. It’s strength lies, in part, in showing the double tragedy of crime and cover up. The police failed Jaxie. School failed Jaxie. Family failed Jaxie. Hope is presented in religion. It feeds him, shelters him, tries to protect him and it outlines a moral code by which he could live. But it’s not perfect, either. At the end of this book, Jaxie finally has the tools to choose the life he wants. Given his options, what does he do?

Jaxie Clackton makes a choice that ensures his title as an epic hero. He asserts his own morality: ‘God is what you do, not what you believe in.’ His instinct is for love. He might not have the right word for it yet and the love he feels might be unholy, but it calls him urgently. As he heads north in a stolen car, we are witness to this miracle and even though his chances aren’t good, it’s hard not to clench your fist and whisper: Go Jaxie. Go.

Tim Winton The Shepherd’s Hut Hamish Hamilton 2018 HB 288pp $39.99

Tom Patterson lives in Sydney. He also writes for Neighbourhood.

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Tags: Norman | Mailer, Tim | Winton