Blueback: A Contemporary Fable (Hardcover)

by Tim Winton (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This thin volume doesn't aspire to the mature complexity of the talented Australian author's The Rider. Though the language is lyrical, Winton pares it down, deliberately simplifying his prose in the service of a clearly articulated call for ecological responsibility. Abel Jackson lives in isolated area of Australia between a national park and the sea, where he helps his mother dive for abalone; his father is dead. When he's 10, he encounters a huge, magnificent blue grouper he names Blueback, a fish legendary for its cleverness and daring. Danger arrives in the form of a vicious fisherman whose predatory methods despoil the bay and put Blueback at risk. Though Abel's mother manages to drive the fisherman away, Abel learns that "there was nothing in nature as cruel and savage as a greedy human being." Over the years, unprincipled developers, pollution and other man-made disasters threaten the bay's pristine beauty before Abel's mother persuades legislators to declare the area a sanctuary. Abel, now a marine biologist, decides to abandon his international career to devote his life to the priceless natural domain where Blueback continues to swim?and to bond with another generation of Jacksons. The book is perhaps more suitable for YA readers than adults, but Winton pulls deftly on the heartstrings as he narrates this quiet tale.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Young Abel and his mother, Dora, lead a peaceful, idyllic life by the sea in Australia. They live off the land and sea, taking no more than they need to survive, carefully husbanding the natural resources at their disposal. Abel's best friend is an enormous fish named Blueback. Time passes, Abel grows up, and he and his mother find it harder to protect Blueback and their "Robbers Bay" from unscrupulous fishermen and developers. Who will prevail in the end? Winton (The Riders, LJ 3/15/95) has imbued this slender tale with the air of an environmental parable, yet the tone is never preachy but contemplative. Recommended especially for environmental collections.
-?Kay Hogan, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; Second Printing edition (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684845652
• ISBN-13: 978-0684845654
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,235,091 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars superb, October 18, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

Brilliant, touching, superb. Highly recommend to anyone who's human. Life changing.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A captivating read !, December 10, 1998

By A Customer

This book was read on Montana Public Radio, and is a wonderful, moving story of nature, change, and humanity. Rich in its simplicity, profound in its beauty. Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a spiritual journey, June 17, 2005

By	frustrated mystic (australia) - See all my reviews

The book "Blueback" by Tim Winton (1997) is an older reader novel, which narrates the story of Abel. The story begins when Abel is ten years old and ends when he is a grown man with a wife and a child of his own. The story explores universal human themes like love for family, passion, growing older and belonging; topics that readers about the age of ten could relate to in quite profound ways. At the beginning of Blueback ten year old Abel's world consists of the sea-diving in particular, and his mother, Dora. As he is diving he encounters a `strange' fish, Blueback:
At the corner of his eye he saw a blue shadow that blocked the sun. He whirled around to see a huge mouth and an eye the size of a golfball coming at him. The mouth opened. He saw massive pegs of teeth as it came on in a terrible rush. Abel screamed in his snorkel..."
Blueback's `strangeness' is a type of metaphor for Abel's burgeoning adolescence. He is ten and so therefore on the verge of that time in life where as the reader becomes aware, he meets with personal conflict and dilemmas as he begins to form his own views and values, discovering who he is and who he wants to be.
Indeed Winton uses metaphors of nature in a profound way throughout Blueback to demonstrate change in Abel's life. For example, as Abel grows older he "wants to know what the sea is about" yet as the reader discovers the `sea' Abel is about to discover is that of life, for just as the sea is a mystery waiting to be lived so is his life at his young inquisitve age:
"It was a mystery. And the more he thought about it the more the whole sea seemed to be a puzzle. Abel wanted to figure it out."
Abel leaves his home, becomes a biologist and travels through the world, gaining honours and achievements, yet in a `spiritual' sense he never leaves his childhood home at Robber's Head. It remains for him a source of belonging and love in the changing flux of his life.
Indeed, so important is the sea and Blueback for Abel that the fish is given human qualities. When for example there is a problem with the ocean, Winton places the humanness of the animal in contrast with the greed of the reefstripper "Costello" who loves the sea only as something of a giant supermarket, fit just for human consumption.
Through Abel then, Winton seems to be saying that although human beings need to use nature for survival it is more than an economic resource. As the wheel of Abel's life turns he meets the inevitable fact of death as his mother passes away, yet death is not final in Winton's story; Abel's love of the sea is renewed in the form of his three year old child who meets the giant fish, Blueback, just as he did as a boy, and so the cycle of love and wonder in nature is renewed in her.