Review: In the Winter Dark by Tim Winton

One of Australian author Tim Winton's most intriguing tales is this short novella, set in an isolated valley known as the Sink. There are only four characters in this book--two men and two women. Through their harrowing experiences, the question is raised, which is more dangerous--the outside world or what lies within us?

The novella opens with Maurice Stubbs, an older man who has lived in the valley with his wife Ida for many years. When the novella opens, the horror is already over, but Maurice explains to us that he is going to explain all that happened. He also further explains that he knows the others and their experiences so well, that he will be able to tell their versions of the story just as easily as his own. In other words, we the readers, are to put our trust in Maurice.

We meet the other three people in this tale, Ida, Murray Jacob (known as Jacob,) and Ronnie. The scene then shifts back to a year earlier when, an unknown and unnamed horrible thing swept through the valley, killing a number of animals--including a dog that is quite literally pulled from its chain. Although almost strangers before, Jacob and the pregnant and recently abandoned by her partner Ronnie team up and a romance begins to flourish. Together they further team up with Maurice and Ida and do their best to fight the horrible thing, which eventually culminates in a surprising but tragic showdown.

In the Winter Dark was very quick, though challenging reading. It was interesting to piece together all of the things that were left unsaid at the end of the novel to gain a better understanding of the story and its moral and it lingered in my mind for a little while afterward. This is a brilliant, well-written tale, though I suspect it will not suit every taste. There are no hard and fast conclusions at the end of the story--the reader has to work that out alone and there is no real sense of closure. Nor does it quite pack quite the same punch of a fully-fledged horror novel, rather it's a glimpse of the dark side of humanity. Recommended, though it may not be what all readers are looking for. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more