Australia, Author, Book review, Fiction, Focus on WA writers, literary fiction, Penguin, Publisher, Reading Projects, Setting, Tim Winton

‘In the Winter Dark’ by Tim Winton

kimbofo

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 176 pages; 2010.

First published in 1988, Tim Winton’s early novella In the Winter Dark is a brilliant slice of Australian Gothic.

It builds on the myth of exotic big cats prowling the Australian bush to create a compelling tale of suspense and intrigue, one that is easily read in a single heart-in-the-mouth sitting.

Set in a deeply forested valley called Sink that has just three houses, a swamp and a river, it tells the story of four neighbours who are fearful of a mysterious creature prowling around their properties. It kills a small pet dog first, eats out the throat of a kangaroo that is found stuck in a fence and decimates a flock of Muscovy ducks and a goat. Later, a flock of 20 sheep is disembowelled.

Tension within the residents builds, not least because there are fears the creature may take a human next, but there are differences of opinion about how to handle the threat.

Old sheep farmer Maurice, who grew up in the valley and has lived with his wife, Ida, for decades, thinks it’s best to take matters into their own hands. He has a shotgun and knows how to use it.

But his neighbour, Murray Jacobs, who has recently sold his lawnmower business in the city to buy the old homestead set amongst orchards, wants to call in the authorities — someone from the shire council or maybe the police.

While Ronnie, a young drug-addicted woman who lives on the other side of the valley, just wants it sorted: she’s got other things to worry about such as the impending birth of her baby and whether her musician boyfriend will ever return from touring.

When the story begins, this quartet of diverse and distinctive characters barely knows each other; by the end, they are very well acquainted — whether they want to be or not.

Dangerous creature 

First edition

Told partly in the first person from Maurice’s point of view and the rest in the third person, the narrative flits around from character to character, sometimes feeling disjointed and confused.

I often had to re-read paragraphs to ensure I understood what was going on. But I think this disorientation is deliberate because it means you’re not sure who to trust or what to think about the dangerous creature supposedly lying in wait. Does it actually exist? Or is there a more rational explanation for the deaths of the farm animals?

He stopped, though, when something caught his eye. Something red. The wet-stiff grass seemed to shiver. Jacob reached for a stick. As he climbed through the fence, the stick snagged in the wire and he fumbled a second and left it there. From across the road, in the tall grass, he heard panting. Well, it might have been panting. He stood there in the road, wishing he could just walk away, but he was afraid to turn his back. Whatever it was, it was moving again. He could see its slow passage through the grass.

The claustrophobic atmosphere is enhanced by the setting. As ever in a Winton story, the landscape is a character in its own right. This time it’s the forest comprised of tall jarrah trees, which evoke that “big church feeling” and are shrouded in mystery thanks to “all those fairy tales […] all those stories we brought with us from another continent, other centuries”.

There’s no neat conclusion to In the Winter Dark, but it does have a dramatic ending — which is foreshadowed on the first page in which Maurice states he often feels “all hot and guilty and scared and rambling and wistful” when he thinks back on what happened 12 months earlier…

I just sit here and tell the story as though I can’t help it.

The film adaptation of In the Winter Dark, starring  Brenda Blethyn, Ray Barrett, Richard Roxburgh and Miranda Otto, was released in 1998 and was nominated for three AFI awards. Dark and moody, it is faithful to the book. You can watch it on YouTube:

I read this book as part of my #FocusOnWesternAustralianWriters. You can find out more about my ongoing reading project here and see what books I’ve reviewed from this part of the world on my Focus on Western Australian page.

Published by kimbofo

I am a book obsessive who has been charting my reading life online since the early 2000s.

14 thoughts on “‘In the Winter Dark’ by Tim Winton”

    1. There’s a lot of Australian literature that does gothic very well, a creeping unease about the landscape and the idea that Nature is so large and unfamiliar we cannot possibly know everything that lives in it. I think this one also riffs on the Aboriginal legend of the bunyip, a scary creature that lives in swamps and waterways.

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  2. This is a novel of which I was entirely unaware. I have criticised Winton in the past for using action sequences to bring otherwise thoughtful novels to a conclusion and I may have to read this one just to find out how it ends.

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    1. Well, I hate to disappoint but I think your theory holds with this one…That said, it’s not a neat ending and I still have questions. We never do find out if the wild cat was real or not.

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    1. It was a random discovery in Dymocks more than a year ago when I was looking through the $12.99 orange Penguins. It’s a quick read and I like that it’s quite vague about a lot of things so you have to fill in the gaps yourself. I still don’t know whether it was a wild cat or a human that carried out the deeds…

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        1. I came across a copy in a newsagent-bookshop in Exmouth WA in 2014, and I think I read it in one go and then forgot about it. I’ve just watched the film on YouTube and now I’ll definitely read the novel again.

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  4. I teach it to my Literature students as a Quintessential example of Australian gothic. The confined setting and its unknown inhabitant slowly squeezes each character until they break: Maurice must confront his secret (and does he actually mean to shoot Ida? I think a part of him does); Ida becomes paranoid (as much as she defers to powerful men, she is manipulative which gains her some control over a life she is ultimately dissatisfied with; when she has a chance to connect with a daughter-figure she enables her corruption and falls the paranoia as years of mistrust boil to the surface)
    ); Ronnie must reap from the plants of her own arrogances and dismissal of the lives of others; and Murray must be corralled into community and care for others, forced to fulfil seemingly fatherly duties as a scar/a reminder of what he never had. Of course each has a history with a cat of some kind, but in the end, that doesn’t matter: it’s the experience of the ‘other’ (ala Lord of the Flies or An Inspector Calls) which brings their undoing. To this extent, like his father, the colonial Maurice is never truly settled – the land is its own thing and can never be conquered. No amount of fencing, deforesting, harvesting or mowing will bring peace. In the end, the truth is waiting to be revealed: people don’t learn and now after a hundred years of failure, the Sink may become a mine site, although how feasible it is is unknown). It’ll give up the people’s secrets, but no-one has tamed the land successfully. And we all know many an Australian mining town which has become destitute and unviable.

    In true Winton fashion the landscape is a crucible
    for the unravelling of the characters, pointing out small threads the characters unravel, waiting for them to spill their secrets (think The Turning).

    I love this novella and although I’ve read it a good ten times, I keep finding new things to love about it.

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