Blueback by Tim Winton

Title: Blueback

Author: Tim Winton

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Penguin

Published: First published 1997, republished several times

Format: Paperback

Pages: 160

Price: $22.99

Synopsis: Blueback is an achingly beautiful story about family, belonging, and living a life in tune with the environment, from Tim Winton, one of Australia’s best-loved authors.

Abel Jackson’s boyhood belongs to a vanishing world. On an idyllic stretch of coast whose waters teem with fish, he lives a simple, tough existence. It’s just him and his mother in the house at Longboat Bay, but Abel has friends in the sea, particularly the magnificent old groper he meets when diving.

As the years pass, things change, but one thing seems to remain constant: the greed of humans. When the modern world comes to his patch of sea, Abel wonders what can stand in its way.

Blueback is a deceptively simple allegory about a boy who matures through fortitude and who finds wisdom through living in harmony with all forms of life.

~*~

I first read Blueback in ear six, when it was given to me as a gift for my birthday. So, it has been on my shelf since 1998, for almost twenty-five years, and was the first – and only – Tim Winton book I’ve read, perhaps because it is the one that appealed to me the most. Blueback follows the story of Abel Jackson, who lives in Longboat Bay with his mother. One year, he discovers an old groper, whom he calls Blueback, and thus begins his tale of trying to fight off the people who come to fish, taking all the abalone resources, and who try to buy the land to redevelop it. Years pass and we see Abel grow up, and time passes as he tries to keep Longboat Bay as the place he knew as a child and celebrates the beauty of the natural environment and the sea, and what it means to all life in Australia.

The heart of this book is the natural landscape – in fact, I think it is a more important character than Abel, Dora, Mad Macka and everyone else, and I think this was the heart of the novel as well. I think this is why I enjoyed the novel when I first read it, and still do – because Abel, Dora, Stella, and the others – whilst they tell the story, and they live in the world, it is as though the bay, and its surrounds dictate how they live and who they become.

It is a gentle story, and a contemplative one about the choices we make, and why, and the role that family and where we grow up has on our lives and who we eventually become. It is this past that leads Abel to his future studies and career, and what this means as we get towards the end of the book – it is one of those stories that is universal, as nothing seems to date this story. It feels like it can take place at any time along the coast of Australia.

This short book is an homage to a coastal life, and what happens when that is threatened by developers or everyone taking resources, making it hard for those who live there to create a life for themselves. It is a fable of sorts, a modern one that exposes what the world is like and how people can act to change it, and do small things to do so, even if it is only in your immediate world. I also found this moving, and think readers of all ages will enjoy it, even though it is probably a kid’s book. I think it is the kind of book that transcends the audience and readership, because it has that universal feeling about it that means it is accessible to all.