BOOK REVIEW
Two for the Price of One
The Turning – Tim Winton (Harper Collins) Once You Break a Knuckle – D.W. Wilson (Penguin)
BILL MACPHERSON Usually it’s novels or non-fiction books reviewed
here but in the past month I’ve read two really good short story collections that deserve an expanded audience (though Tim Winton is quite renowned), and share a lot of similarities. So, it’s like those advertising shills on late night infomercials – two for the price of one! As noted, there are a number of common factors in
both these collections. Foremost is the inter-connectedness of the stories within each book. Characters jump in and out, weaving entwined at varying ages and stages of life – sometimes as narrator, other times as a minor mention – but ultimately making each book stronger and more cohesive through their recurrence. Both speak of a particular place also, geographic
polaropposites where each author grew up. Winton writes of West Australia: Perth, its suburbs and the small towns around the city and to the south. Wilson’s milieu is the southeastern British Columbia town of Invermere. I haven’t been “down under”, yet, but West Australia
and the Gold Coast is the most appealing part of that continent for me, in small part to the open vastness of the
land and the rawness of the people Winton conveys so wonderfully in his novels and stories. Having spent a lot of time one mountain range over
from the Columbia Valley where Invermere is, I can attest to Wilson’s small town/spectacular surroundings motif that runs throughout his inaugural collection – he captures the beauty of the Kootenays along with the harshness and dulling familiarity of small town life, one often cancelling out the other inadvertently. Sometimes circumstance completely fogs appreciation of surroundings. There are differences besides the settings and
twenty-some years in age. Winton is well established, Wilson’s collection is his first publication. The former is the author of many books, including two Man Booker prize-nominated novels, named a Living Treasure by the Australian National Trust. Wilson published his first novel Ballistics (and second book) in 2013. Even though both are at different stages of their careers, their exceptional talent shines in both collections. They are muscular writers, capturing their chosen locale and those that inhabit it with lean, stark, often
contiinued on page 41
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