This was my first Winton & it was really good! This story draws you in sentence by sentence & before you know it, you're halfway through the book.
Scully is renovating an old house in Ireland, eagerly awaiting the arrival of his wife & his daughter from Australia. Finally the day comes & he's at the airport but when the plane arrives, only his daughter, Billie embarks.
This is the story of a man coming undone & dragging Billie through Europe to find his wife. I loved Tim's descriptions eg, 'being brained with Celtic history' (a rock from an old castle) or how about ' mist hung on him like a bedwetter's blanket'. In some ways the story is really uncomfortable as we see Scully's madness, grief & finally his resignation when he realises Jennifer doesn't want to be found. In other ways it's absolutely infuriating as we watch Scully drag Billie into some horrific situations (& sometimes some downright dangerous ones). I loved watching Billie's character unfolding as she realises her Dad doesn't really know what he's doing & finally takes control of the situation herself. All in all, Winton's prose makes an awful topic completely compelling that I couldn't help but love.

This novel follows a rough blue collar Aussie and his 7 year-old daughter as they travel around Europe in search of his wife who appears to have abandoned them shortly after they relocate to rural Ireland.

I really like Winton's writing (here and in other novels). Very atmospheric and also very male. I liked but didn't love the story. I wanted to get more Ireland and less Greece I think. And though I think Jennifer is a total POS for leaving her kid, I can't say I blame her for leaving Skully. I didn't find him very likable or appealing. Billie was weirdly written as a character. Far too mature for a 7 year old. Still a good book. Lots of angles worth pondering and discussing. ( )

Great to read TW expanding beyond the Australian landscape by travelling Europe while setting his people in Ireland. A heart wrenching depiction of a man and his 7 year old daughter scouring Europe for his strayed wife. Unresolved but accepted while still unsure of why she left. ( )

Every once in a while, I come across a book that I find interesting enough to read, even though it’s not on my general “to read” pile / list. This is true about my recent read, Tim Winton‘s The Riders. I’ve never heard of this book before I started it – it’s not even mine. I discovered it on a bookshelf of an office I’m temporarily working from The two main reasons I picked it up: 1. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize back in 1995, the year Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road won, and 2. I was bored and didn’t have anything interesting to read.

Not knowing anything about a book before reading it has its advantages. Mainly, it kept me reading until I finally figured out what “genre” it belonged to, or what exactly it was about. For about a quarter of the book, it was hard to say exactly what the story was going to be about. It opens with an Australian man, Fred Scully, fixing up a dilapidated cottage he bought on a whim – on his wife’s whim, in a small wooded village in Ireland. While on a short side trip to Ireland before going back to Australia with his family, Scully’s wife saw the cottage, near a ruined medieval castle, and had a “feeling” about it. Scully, being a devoted husband, bought the house with the plan of living in it and relocating to Ireland permanently. Scully sent his wife Jennifer and 7-year-old daughter, Billie back to Australia to sell their old house, and to facilitate the move, while he stayed in the cottage in Ireland to fix it up and make it more habitable.

While fixing up the house, to drive the loneliness away, Scully thinks back on his life – how he met his beautiful, intelligent wife, quite out of his league, about his unique, outspoken daughter and their special bond, and their gypsy life, travelling from Australia to Greece, and then to France, and London. During their travels, Scully, a big, burly, ugly, hairy, neanderthalesque type of man, finds odd jobs in construction and manual labor, while Jennifer engages in different artistic pursuits; writing poetry, painting, trying to find herself. Their family was unconventional, but Scully was in love with Jennifer, and loved his life.

For three months, Scully labored on their little house, while Jennifer and Billie waited for the sale of their house in Fremantle, Australia. Scully befriends the local postman, Pete-the-Post, and with his help, was able to make vast improvements on the old cottage. More than helping with the repairs around the house, Pete proves to be a good friend who helps Scully through his isolation and loneliness. Jennifer sends occasional telegrams regarding the sale of their house, and their arrival to Ireland. However, on the appointed day, when Scully goes to the airport to pick them up, only Billie emerges from the arrivals gate. Tired-looking, and scared, Billie is accompanied by a flight attendant who informs Scully, to his growing confusion, that Billie had boarded the plane from Heathrow Airport alone. Billie, usually talkative, not only refuses to answer Scully’s questions about what happened and where Jennifer was, but refuses to talk altogether. Scully’s mind is filled with questions and possibilities, mostly of concern; was Jennifer hurt, was she lying in a hospital somewhere, bleeding to death, but try as he might, he couldn’t help the slivers of doubt that escape his mind – did she run away with another man? Did she plan the whole thing from the beginning – selling their house in Australia and forcing him to buy a cottage in remote Ireland to get him and Billie out of her life? Distraught, confused, and disoriented, Scully takes Billie and decides to revisit some of the places they’ve lived in before Ireland, in hopes of finding answers to Jennifer’s disappearance, but mostly because he refused to sit around, doing nothing, waiting for her to return.

Scully and Billie first return to Greece, where, according to Scully’s assessment, they lived a happy, fulfilled life among European and American expats. Scully is convinced that of all the places they’ve lived in, Greece would be the place Jennifer would return to if she was going through something difficult. However, upon his return, Scully and Billie were met with suspicion, even hostility. Dazed and lost, Scully moves among the community in Greece in a perpetual state of confusion, to the growing concern and disappointment of young Billie. In his desperation to find answers, and to find Jennifer, Scully all but neglects Billie, who gets into a terrible, unavoidable accident. Terrified of what was happening around him, Scully, with Billie in tow, leaves Greece and travels towards Italy, with no plan in mind. His continued search for Jennifer brings him next to Paris, and then to Amsterdam, all the time chasing leads and hunches.

The Riders is a sad, haunting tale of love, and the extent one would go to find it, and whether or not it’s possible to love someone too much. During his search for Jennifer, Scully looks back on their life together, and the people they’ve met, friend’s they’ve made, and questions whether or not he really truly knew any of them, including Jennifer, and himself. The novel is seeped in sadness and melancholy, which can be felt through the narrative, which sets the mood with its beautiful descriptions of scenery, and tries to capture Billie’s and Scully’s fleeting thoughts, memories, and emotions.

If I had to classify it, I would go with mystery/drama, with a bit of a supernatural feel to it, which may or may not be metaphorical. It’s a very intriguing and captivating novel, though toward the end, I felt a bit impatient with the narrative, wanting only to solve the the mystery and to get answers. Overall, I think I enjoyed the book – it kept me up till the wee hours of the morning – but I don’t know whether it was really the book itself or the current situation I’m in and the circumstances which “forced” me to read that particular book. I think my work-related isolation in a cold (colder than what I’m used to in the city), wooded, quiet region reinforced the novel’s moody ambiance. Though sometimes I think, had I seen this book in the city, with so many other books to choose from, I might not have been so compelled to read it, or to stick with it to the end. ( )

I love the way Winton describes the struggles of people with such realism and honesty and the way he places them in landscapes and settings which match or enhance that honesty. This book did not let me down in this regard. I was however disappointed with the ending. Where is the redemption and hope? It was too bleak and pointless. ( )