Following his previous three novels — the work upon which much of Winton’s international acclaim rests — the 17 interconnected stories of The Turning come as something of a revelation. Those previous works, to this reviewer’s mind, have tended towards being overwritten and over-embellished (give-away epithets such as ‘lyrical’, ‘exuberant’, ‘inventive’ and ‘gutsy’ commonly recur).
In The Turning, however, Winton has spectacularly reinvented himself and reined in his writing to create a world of pared-down, stunning and entirely believable completeness and complexity; a world at once exotically alien and instantly knowable. There is a precision here, and an openness, a honed inventiveness in which the telling detail and prescient moment count for considerably more than the endless detail and infilling of some of his previous work.
The failing Australian seaside town of Angelus is the focus for these tales.
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