Talk us through it
The isolated valley simply know as "the sink" to locals is home to the grieving Murray Jacobs, Ronnie a women apparently pregnant and abandoned, and old farming couple Maurice and Ida Stubbs. Nothing much happens in the valley and the residents are left alone to hide their secrets in decaying gothic fortitude. When Ronnie's ducks and her goat are brutal slain and the Stubbs's small dog is decapitated by something unseen and unknown the neighbours must band together to hunt down what Maurice thinks is a large feral cat. Ida may have other ideas about what exactly has entered their valley. And end of day it may not be the predator that the residents of the sink need to worry about. With secrets simmering to the surface can an unprepared scooby gang face off against an unknown terror with no help from the outside world?
ReviewTim Winton is the sort of writer that ABC literary shows and newspaper Critics fall over themselves with almost orgasmic intensity over. And why not folks, he's a bloody good writer, produces books that the common punter isn't likely to read, and makes your average critic go weak at the knees as they can keep up the pretence that they are superior to the rest of us due to reading Winton. Please note I said he's "a bloody good writer" before contacting the site after reading this review, we call them as we read them folks. Having read three Winton novels thus far I have to say the Author is very strong with his narrative structure, captures dialogue expertly, and for sure he can jump over tall ivory towers in a single leap. What Winton doesn't know how to do is tell a story or build tension. With In The Winter Dark Winton makes the mistake a lot of mainstream writers do when attempting a horror novel, they don't understand the particular tiger they have by the tail and end up looking simply silly when that tiger takes a huge bite out of their arse.In The Winter Dark starts well, and as stated Winton is a good writer though perhaps more in the John Irving range than the Stephen King naturalist style. We have the ordinary introduced quickly and then the forces of chaos unleashed onto everyday people who are not equipped to deal with it. So far so good and I can get down and funky with the opening salvo. This story can go in numerous ways though considering it's Winton writing I wasn't expecting a lycanthrope outing to be perfectly honest. Damn if only Martin Livings had of been the author. Unfortunately for the reader Winton then spends great swaths of the book having his characters pretty much simply naval gazing and not exactly out there seizing their day. I'm all for background, motivation, and all that other good characterisation mojo, but folks I'm here to tell you I'm reading a horror story not a Jane Austin period novel. Winton doesn't know what the hell he is doing within the horror confines and tries to fit his plot and themes to a structure that already has hairline fractures appearing. When our Scooby gang finally do decide that just maybe they should sort things out and get stuck in I was left bemused by how Winton approached it. Maurice decides it's a feral cat, apparently they grow to gigantic size - is this guy really meant to have lived in the bush all his life? - while Ida may have more of an idea having in the past come across an overturned circus truck. I leave it to the review reader to decide whether an overturned circus truck in the isolated sink is something of a plot hole. I'll also leave it to the Academics to make hay out of the sunshine of Ida coming across an escaped wild animal, after all they do make a living out of counting how many feral cats can dance on the head of a pin. What's interesting for us is that Ida has information of a possible large cat escape and never shares with the group. Murray for his part is sceptical about the whole feral cat thing, and hey so was I, was this novella ever submitted to Agog's Daikaiju! series of books! While Ronnie is simply way too self focused to actually care what's going down. Awesome, introduce Jason Voorhees in the mix and we can cut out eighty odd pages of waffle with a few inventive kills! Okay being a bit of a dick there folks. When we finally do get to our resolution, suitably dark and nihilistic as befits a horror story and the mood being generated through the narrative, it's via Maurice Stubbs acting completely out of character; once again is this guy meant to have been a farmer all his life? One of the things I do note with Tim Winton books is that his characters have a tendency to do things that the plot demands rather than the narrative structure would lead you to believe they would do. Worse yet Winton foreshadows his ending earlier in the novel with a more believable scene, Murray is a townie after all and who's going to ever trust them on the farm. Winton definitely has themes running through In The Winter Dark, isolated inward looking rural life meeting dynamic chaotic modern city pressures, but he has picked the wrong genre to set those themes in. Most horror fans will not be fooled by a character who hasn't been given the background and the motivation to do something, your novel will fall apart like a house of cards on the basis of that issue. Winton fails to provide the necessary foundations for his characters and as such the story simply doesn't gel or ring true. Sorry horror fandom is a tough audience, just ask any horror author who has been taken to task at a conference over getting it wrong. Actually thinking about it, Brett McBean would have put together a pretty good rural massacre novel based on the premise here. In The Winter Dark engages the reader, is written extremely well, but simply doesn't work given the literary structure it finds itself in. I remember in his review of The Descent David Stratton (At The Movies) remarked that the movie did not need the creatures to get the effect it was after, my wife had surprisingly earlier come to the same conclusion. In a similar vein Winton's story did not need the horror trappings to get where it was going. The Author needs to read a lot more horror before trying the genre on for size, it's not a good fit currently Tim. As they say, In The Winter Dark should be available from all good bookshops, after all it's "quality literature". I discovered my copy hidden away in the back of a book shelf while I was cleaning out a study in preparation for painting. I picked the book up originally at "Constant Reader" in Crows Nest Sydney due to not having anything I particularly wanted to buy that day, and the added advantage of two cinema tickets being offered with the book purchase for the movie adaptation. I didn't make the movie for whatever reason and no one wanted the tickets, so in the wash up not the best purchase I have ever made.
ScaryMinds Rates this read as ... Winton is a strong writer but he's not a horror writer.
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