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A review by kimbofo
Il nido by Tim Winton
5.0
If you've ever spoken your mind, or stood up for something you believe in when it might have been easier — and safer — to keep quiet, you will find plenty to identify with in Tim Winton's Eyrie.
In this extraordinary novel — Winton's 11th — we meet Tom Keely, a middle-aged spokesman for an environmental campaign group, who has lost his high-flying, highly pressurised job for daring to speak the truth. He's also lost his comfortable lifestyle, his lovely house and his marriage.
Now, holed up in a flat at the top of a grim high-rise residential tower overlooking Fremantle, he's living like a recluse: not even his mother, a social justice lawyer, is allowed to visit.
Burnt out, broke and clearly ill, he spends his days drinking and his evening popping prescription medication. There is little joy or meaning in his life, but then he meets his neighbours — Gemma, a woman from his past, and her six-year-old grandson, Kai — and things become slightly more interesting — and dangerous.
Told in the third person but entirely from Keely's point of view, the novel charts Keely's slow return to the world he's given up on. But as he endeavours to do the right thing by Gemma and Kai, he finds himself becoming immersed in a seedy world far removed from his middle-class upbringing.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
In this extraordinary novel — Winton's 11th — we meet Tom Keely, a middle-aged spokesman for an environmental campaign group, who has lost his high-flying, highly pressurised job for daring to speak the truth. He's also lost his comfortable lifestyle, his lovely house and his marriage.
Now, holed up in a flat at the top of a grim high-rise residential tower overlooking Fremantle, he's living like a recluse: not even his mother, a social justice lawyer, is allowed to visit.
Burnt out, broke and clearly ill, he spends his days drinking and his evening popping prescription medication. There is little joy or meaning in his life, but then he meets his neighbours — Gemma, a woman from his past, and her six-year-old grandson, Kai — and things become slightly more interesting — and dangerous.
Told in the third person but entirely from Keely's point of view, the novel charts Keely's slow return to the world he's given up on. But as he endeavours to do the right thing by Gemma and Kai, he finds himself becoming immersed in a seedy world far removed from his middle-class upbringing.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.