Eyrie in Aussie Readers

May 19, 2015 PattyMacDotComma rated it really liked it

Shelves: aa, australian-author

Well this was different, wasn't it? Just before reading Eyrie, I read The Turning - a series of short stories written in 2006 about the sort of people who are in this 2013 novel.

As I was reading, I found the language jarring and the situations confronting and thought about the mixed reviews I'd read. I didn't think it read like Tim Winton. But it is Winton, right? And I'd signed up for the June challenge and bought the book (eBook) so no way was I quitting.

Then, Keely, our main character (poor Well this was different, wasn't it? Just before reading Eyrie, I read The Turning - a series of short stories written in 2006 about the sort of people who are in this 2013 novel.

As I was reading, I found the language jarring and the situations confronting and thought about the mixed reviews I'd read. I didn't think it read like Tim Winton. But it is Winton, right? And I'd signed up for the June challenge and bought the book (eBook) so no way was I quitting.

Then, Keely, our main character (poor miserable lost soul that he is), started thinking his childhood and wandered down to the shore and the swamps - all good Winton territory - and the language changed and Keely seemed a bit refreshed. Whenever he went in the water, he felt relief, and we sensed it through the tone of the language as much as through the actual words.

That's when I realised that the language that annoyed me was about the things that bugged Keely. He would lapse into some lousy bureaucracy-speak and some stupid slang when he was thinking or talking about bad stuff. But when he reminisced or wandered down to the wharves or the swamps, rivers and bush, his thinking changed to the more lyrical descriptive language that Winton excels at.

I think what Keely despises in himself and the 'system' from which he is been expelled is reflected in the tone of his thoughts and speech. He's a man sinking lower and lower so he can fall and hit bottom, because we all know that you have to hit bottom before you help yourself back up. His flat, the pub, the bad guys - the all reek of terrible smells and smoke and despair.

When Keely forgets all the bad stuff going on today and thinks about how he used to feel as a kid and what his aspirations were as an environmental activist, his thoughts get quite poetic. I stopped being annoyed at Keely's bad turns - which were many and often - and started enjoying the whole story as I watched the language shift from angry to thoughtful.

Gemma, the childhood friend often 'rescued' by his parents in years past and now Nana of Kai, a probably autistic little boy whose druggie mum (Gemma's daughter) is in jail, forces Keely both to live in today and to remember his past. He has a hard time reconciling the two. He doesn't really know where he wants to live. Loves his mum, Doris, but doesn't really want to live in her home, successful professional that she's become.

Winton is a writer who can make you smell the rancid putridness of a neglected flat or a rotten alley. His repetition of extremely simple, homely meals at little tables shows us exactly how far removed he's become from his formerly quasi-famous life in the public eye. We don't hear much about that, just enough to know that Keely (like Winton) is desperately sad about how Australia, particularly WA, has chosen to follow short-term economic gain over long-term sustainable social and environmental benefit.

Keely tries hard to hang on to the normality of these tiny family moments - shared meals and Scrabble - as a way to keep from losing his mind completely.

He's full of pills - mostly painkillers and sedatives - and grog and we suffer every headache and nauseating day-after with him. Not fun, but understandable.

The crazies are still crazy at the end, and I'm not quite sure where everyone will go from here one, but I have some hope for them. ...more

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Oct 06, 2015 Alan Baxter rated it it was ok

Shelves: literary

Some of the writing here is absolutely brilliant. True craft on display. That alone kept me reading, because the characters are all thoroughly unlikeable and virtually nothing happens by way of story in more than 400 pages. Plus there's an infuriating literary wank on display with a complete lack of dialogue quote marks, which only serves to make the book harder to read, drawing attention to the text rather than the story. So annoying. And the end is... Well, not there. The whole thing just pete ...more

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Jun 04, 2023 Tien rated it it was ok

Shelves: australian-author, contemporary, australia, signed-by-author, subdue-the-shelf

There wasn't that much "he said", "she said" which is good. BUT, there also wasn't any quotation marks which were REA(!!)LLY(!!) bad. I am just one of those who needed that delineation. I needed to know when it's someone thinking or speaking and Who's actually speaking. I was just so confused with this novel. While the language itself is pretty easy to follow and therefore, turned out to be a fast read, the protagonist/narrator was also unreliable. Hence, it compounded my confusion. And that end ...more

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Oct 20, 2013 Magdalena added it

Tom Keely, the protagonist of Tim Winton’s new novel Eyrie is both charming and utterly unreliable. He lives his life in a self-created fug of anxiety, pain, and confusion, lurching from his isolated “eyrie” on the tenth floor of a run-down apartment complex in Fremantle, Western Australia, to a neighbourhood full of potential human hazard traps where he has to go to get food, fresh air, coffee and alcohol. Keely’s fug undermines and colours the narrative progression as we see it, which creates Tom Keely, the protagonist of Tim Winton’s new novel Eyrie is both charming and utterly unreliable. He lives his life in a self-created fug of anxiety, pain, and confusion, lurching from his isolated “eyrie” on the tenth floor of a run-down apartment complex in Fremantle, Western Australia, to a neighbourhood full of potential human hazard traps where he has to go to get food, fresh air, coffee and alcohol. Keely’s fug undermines and colours the narrative progression as we see it, which creates deep cognitive dissonance in the reader, especially when coupled with Winton’s usual readability, reasonably straightforward narrative progression, and the utter linguistic beauty as we delve into Keely’s psyche. The story progresses easily, driven forward by a racy plot that involves Keely bumping into Gemma, a woman who used to grew up with Keely under his family’s care when her own family became too unstable. Gemma appears to have moved into Keely’s building with her grandson Kai, a boy who is oddly vulnerable and seems to recognise Keely. Kai catches Keely’s attention and engages him in ways he can’t quite understand, and he is deeply drawn into Kai and Gemma’s world, made dangerous by Gemma’s drug-addled son-in-law, Kai’s father, and his attempts to blackmail and bully Gemma and Kai.

The main narrative is driven along by a series of questions, many of which remain unanswered. Who is Keely, and why is he is such a terrible state? We learn the answers to this one gradually, and often in spectacular thought processes. Keely was an environmentalist who was fired after he pointed a finger at some political wrong-doing – a whistle-blower who was punished for his honesty:

No easy thing to unwind from. The toxic adrenaline, the ceaseless performance, the monastic discipline. Sucking in trouble every day before sun-up, preparing a full day’s strategy in the shower. Finding yourself in the office at midnight, after the final, five-way phone hook-up shaking with rage, caffeine and fatigue. (7)

We also know that his marriage has broken down after his wife had an affair. Between the two pivotal events, both in the past, Keely has broken down, losing his faith in both his ideals and love. Tied up with this is the loss of his father – a missionary type who Keely looked up to. Keely’s feelings towards his own dad – a man he sees as infallible and whose example he can never live up to – colour his feelings towards young Kai, who has terrifying dreams and visions, and who recognises Keely. There is also the strange, somewhat stilted relationship between Gemma and Keely. Of course the biggest question is whether Keely will get his life together, especially as his growing sense of responsibility towards Kai requires a clear head. Keely’s mental state is one that slides between alcohol addiction and pain killers, but he has some odd gaps, even fugue states, in which he seems to have no recollection of drinking or taking anything. The relationship between his self-perception and the response that others have to him, including the concern of his mother Doris, Gemma, and his ex-wife. Keely might be a hopeless case if he weren’t so wonderful with Kai, and if his perceptions and observations weren’t so rich and poetic:

Up ahead, the ancient marri upon which all his hopes rested began to emerge from the shadows, more skeleton these days than living tree, a barkless grey column topped by contorted while limbs that towered out across undergrowth, rocks, shade, water. He’d come here a lot with Harriet, then alone sometimes when he visited Doris. Back when he actually bothered. You could hike down the scree-slope from the road but the view from the water beat everything. That tree, he thought. It stood before whitefellas even dreamt of this place. It was here when the river was teeming, when cook-fires and dances stitched the banks into coherent song, proper country. Just to see it was a mental correction, a recalibration. (86)

Keely may or may not be able to save himself, but he is sincere, trying, even against the cynicism of his destroyed idealisms, to do as little harm as possible. That’s easier said than done, and all the pills in Keely’s drawers won’t stop him from impacting on those who have come into his orbit. All of the characters in this book are needy in one way or another, even those, like Keely’s mum Doris, who appear to be self-contained. These needs, some of which are complex and subtle, form a subtext that operates as a perfect contrast to the thriller-like action that escalates as the story progresses. The result is a beautiful, deep and engaging story that illuminates human frailty, teases out the nature of risk and compassion, and goes very deep into the heart of love, loss, and personal responsibility.
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