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.
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“Jaxie Clakton, the male protagonist in this gritty novel told in the first person, is one tough, foul-mouthed teenager. So it might be initially surprising to learn that the choice narrator for the audiobook is a 40-year-old woman, even if Kate Mulvaney’s Western Australian accent is perfect for the novel’s setting. But just minutes into this story of survival and an unlikely friendship that comes to a shocking end, listeners won’t be able to imagine Jaxie’s voice from anyone else. Mulvany is marvelous at capturing the angst and anger of this deeply compelling character, and she is absolutely convincing in her delivery of the novel’s dialogue, with all of Winton’s wonderful regional vocabulary. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
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