Shallows

Tim Winton's first Miles Franklin-winner, Shallows revolves around the ruthless commerce of whaling, and Queenie Cookson, who joins the fight to end it

"Animating all 150 years of the settlement's history, [this novel] carries the symbolic weight of its subject matter - of whales and water and meaning of life - as lightly as a wind off the sea... Shallows deserves to find a permanent place as a major work of Australian literature."  -  Elizabeth Ward, Washington Post Book World

Whales have always been the life force of Angelus, a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. Their annual passing defines the rhythms of a life where little changes, and the town depends on their carcasses. So when the battle begins on the beaches outside their town, and when Queenie Cookson, a local girl, joins the Greenies to make amends for the crimes of her whaling ancestors, it can only throw everything into chaos. 

"Shallows is more than a passionate meditation on the tragedy of whaling; it is in some ways a minimalist Moby Dick, a questioning of the ways of God to man and of man to God."  -  The Sydney Morning Herald

"The world here, the rainy, closed, quiet, claustrophobic world of the southern beach town just a long stone's throw away from Antarctica, is perfectly evoked... The elegance of language, the grandeur of the nature being described... all this is dazzling... It makes the heart pound."  -  Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Winner of the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in Australia, this eloquent and moving novel speaks with immediacy and passion of the conflict between the values of a close-knit, traditional society and the evolving mores of the wider world.