Eyrie

Tom Keely's reputation is in ruins.
And that's the upside.

Divorced and unemployed, he's lost faith in everything precious to him. Holed up in a grim highrise, cultivating his newfound isolation, Keely looks down at a society from which he's retired hurt and angry. He's done fighting the good fight, and well past caring.

But even in his seedy flat, ducking the neighbours, he's not safe from entanglement. All it takes is an awkward encounter in the lobby. A woman from his past, a boy the likes of which he's never met before. Two strangers leading a life beyond his experience and into whose orbit he falls despite himself.

What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times – funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting. Inhabited by unforgettable characters, Eyrie asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing.

Read John Purcell's Review

While reading Tim Winton's latest novel, Eyrie, I couldn't help thinking about Charlotte Wood's Animal People, Zadie Smith's NW and to a lesser extent, Julian Barnes' Sense of an Ending. All four books have been published in the last five years. Each chronicles the lives of people making do within a society they have inherited. Each book is despairing of the turn the western world has taken. Each searches for some sign that all is not lost.

Eyrie takes things one step further. All is lost in Tim Winton's book. There is no hope whatsoever. The backdrop to Winton's despair is the West Australian government's acquiescence to the needs of mining companies. His protagonist Tom Keely, a onetime prominent local environmentalist, is a defeated man. The tide of his life is out and all is exposed to the unforgiving sun. But it is at this moment someone from the forgotten past enters his life. She is all life has to offer him now. There are no easy choices. The route back to life promises to be unforgiving and without reward. Can Tom Keely pull himself together one last time?

The lesson here is, if there is a lesson, "ashes or diamonds, foe or friend, we're all equal in the end".

Shortlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Award