Blueback
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
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.
'In true fable style, this is a simple story, but one so beautiful, poignant and moving it is impossible to ignore.' Daily Telegraph
'Winton . . . convince[s] us of the preciousness of our oceans not through lectures but through his characters' steady wonder.' New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This thin volume doesn't aspire to the mature complexity of the talented Australian author's The Rider. Though the language is lyrical, Winton pares it down, deliberately simplifying his prose in the service of a clearly articulated call for ecological responsibility. Abel Jackson lives in isolated area of Australia between a national park and the sea, where he helps his mother dive for abalone; his father is dead. When he's 10, he encounters a huge, magnificent blue grouper he names Blueback, a fish legendary for its cleverness and daring. Danger arrives in the form of a vicious fisherman whose predatory methods despoil the bay and put Blueback at risk. Though Abel's mother manages to drive the fisherman away, Abel learns that "there was nothing in nature as cruel and savage as a greedy human being." Over the years, unprincipled developers, pollution and other man-made disasters threaten the bay's pristine beauty before Abel's mother persuades legislators to declare the area a sanctuary. Abel, now a marine biologist, decides to abandon his international career to devote his life to the priceless natural domain where Blueback continues to swim--and to bond with another generation of Jacksons. The book is perhaps more suitable for YA readers than adults, but Winton pulls deftly on the heartstrings as he narrates this quiet tale.
