Advertisement
Books

Juice by Tim Winton review – asking big questions after the apocalypse

Australian novelist Winton is a post-apocalyptic call to arms over global warming

Tim Winton’s latest, hauntingly post–apocalyptic novel Juice is peppered with fragments of recognisable western culture. Snippets from the Bible and poetry leak into the otherwise blunt speech of our anonymous narrator. 

Winton’s protagonist tells his story in staccato bursts. Even though this is quite a long novel, and quite an unremittingly bleak one, it never loses that intensity and focus. 

Winton has spent seven years writing this novel – which is, above all, a polemical take on a futuristic world after a climate apocalypse has rendered civilisation subordinate to the desperate desire for water and escape from the heat. 

After a pulsating start in which our hero drags a child through this barren wilderness while being chased by mysterious forces, we settle into the story of his life. In a bid to combat the hubs of climate criminals who roam the lifeless earth, he joins a paramilitary organisation which is leading operations from Utah to the Australian West Coast. A bowman is the only companion to the jaundiced narrator, and he offers bursts of light to change the perspective. 

Throughout the novel, the reader is urged to embrace the sheer alien nature of the world that Winton depicts – the way that he manipulates our view of what has survived the apocalypse, and what has not. That said, within his critical and prophetic vision there are still important remnants of the emotional intensity and characterisation for which Winton has made his name. 

Our protagonist’s mother, daughter and wife are central, witty and ultimately destructive characters, who provide something of a core to this novel that we can relate to. It is a profoundly, powerfully disorientating read; our sense of time, space, morality all upended. 

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertisement

Although this novel is big – perhaps even too big – it is also finely controlled. Characters speak monosyllabically most of the time, and Winton plugs in some technical language throughout to increase the novel’s visceral sense of the arduous reality of his devastated world. 

Yet it is much more than a story of disaster and adventure, for Winton probes purposeful questions. What is left of our sense of others when survival is so much more difficult? How justified is violence in avenging the victims of corporate destruction? How much of an ‘ordinary’ world might be saved in this world? This is a novel with a purpose and a message. 

Juice by Tim Winton is out now (Pan Macmillan, £22).You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. This Christmas, you can make a lasting change on a vendor’s life. Buy a magazine from your local vendor in the street every week. If you can’t reach them, buy a Vendor Support Kit.

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

Never miss an issue

Take advantage of our special subscription offer. Subscribe from just £9.99 and never miss an issue.

Recommended for you

Read All
Hedonist ex-MP Victor Grayson tried to expose corruption and scandal. Then he disappeared forever
Corruption

Hedonist ex-MP Victor Grayson tried to expose corruption and scandal. Then he disappeared forever

Top 5 gritty thrillers, chosen by viral sensation and best-selling author Lloyd Devereux Richards
Books

Top 5 gritty thrillers, chosen by viral sensation and best-selling author Lloyd Devereux Richards

The Summer We Ate Off the China by Devin Jacobsen review – digging for deepest meaning
Books

The Summer We Ate Off the China by Devin Jacobsen review – digging for deepest meaning

How four women raged a secret propaganda war against the Nazis during World War II
World War II

How four women raged a secret propaganda war against the Nazis during World War II

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue