Brett Evans

It's also that portrait of the abused child.

Doesn't give anything away.

Jack's beaten up by his father a great deal.

In fact, when we first meet him, he's laying face down in a bag of bones because his dad is the local butcher.

Yeah, and he's been whacked and he's just kind of groggily waking up there.

Kids who go through that, they're hyper alert.

They're suspicious of everything and everyone.

And that's partly what the book is about as well.

He starts off that kind of kid and then maybe by the end of it, he's a different type of kid.

Or maybe his suspicions pay off.

Maybe his suspicions prepared him for what comes later and he was the right guy in the right place in the right time, maybe, yeah.

They say the moon is an eye.

And he's always looking at things through his gun sight as well.

now.

Well, I thought he was quoting his dad.

That's the sort of thing his dad would have said.

So that made sense to me.

Yeah, that's my feeling too.

And also, I imagine, I don't know what Tim Winton would say about this, but he said it in Our Times because he thinks the things he's talking about are for our times and all times.

Now, he's very serious about the underlying ideas that he's trying to express are very serious to him, I think.