For January 2021, we roll out our towels on the Australian beach.
Nothing says Aussie summer holidays quite like the sand, headlands and flags of our world famous beaches. But beneath the glistening waves and beyond the dunes, things are not always as idyllic as they seem. For our first look in the rear-view mirror for 2021, we revisit a teenage feminist succès de scandale, a gripping coming-of-age and some collected stories of a perpetual Australian beachcomber.
When paramedic Bruce Pike is called out to deal with another teenage adventure gone wrong, he knows better than his colleague, better than the kid's parents, what happened and how. Thirty years before, that dead boy could have been him. Tim Winton's Breath, winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, is a story about the wildness of youth and learning to live with its passing.
Witty, clever, ever touching and always inventive, the eleven stories in The True Colour of the Sea take us to many varied coasts: whether a tense Christmas holiday apartment overlooking the Indian Ocean or the shabby glamour of a Cuban resort hotel. Relationships might be frayed, savaged, regretted or celebrated, but here there is always the life-force of the ocean – seducing, threatening, inspiring.
