Juice

Gabi's Review

My father repeatedly advised me as a child: "If you don't have anything nice to say Gabrielle, don't say anything at all." Tim Winton has nothing nice to say about the future in his latest dystopian post-climate change novel Juice, but he has managed the difficult task of delivering a pacy, compelling thriller about the imminent earth system collapse without preaching to the reader.

Juice delivers its Mad Max aesthetic with grit and authenticity, focused on survival and retribution with visceral clarity. The macro theme sees members of a resistance army surviving in subterranean bolt holes in a broiling unrecognisable Western Australian north. In the style of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Juice employs a retrospective narrative in the interrogation of the unnamed hostage protagonist. He gives an account of his role as part of a resistance militia attempting to take down the techno-feudal overlords who were the architects of the climate apocalypse. In a damning Song of Names-style chant, he reels off the names of the major oil and gas conglomerates responsible for the crisis. The hostage narrative works well as a plot device for the climate degradation story and eliminates the need for a resolution. The implication is that we must act now to prevent the corporate endgame.

However, while Winton has rendered a future dystopian landscape with seamless verisimilitude, his characters feel more 1980s than decades far into the future. The pivotal mother-son relationship reads like a cut-and-paste of his novel Blueback. While the novel rails against free market economics for causing environmental devastation, its surprising blind spot is the absence of the influence of technology. While ‘the Sims’ – Winton’s AGI robots- are a hilarious and much-needed linking device, their human-aligned values seem naïve in the context of the current damaging trajectory of AI in big tech. These are highly personal reservations in what is otherwise a thoroughly immersive page-turner.

Juice is topical, political and representative of Winton’s abiding passion for the environment. He earns his merits once again as a National Living Treasure. This is a detailed expose of our global society blindsided and bankrupted by corporate greed as our once abundant planet progressively transitions into a living hell.

Publisher's Review 

An epic novel of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. This is Tim Winton as you've never read him before.

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they're not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.

'Juice, Winton has said, means "human resilience and moral courage", and there is that in spades in this complex, riveting book already being hailed as a masterpiece.' - SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

'A hold-your-breath adventure set in an utterly plausible, sun-hammered future, JUICE will stab your conscience and break your heart.' - EMMA DONOGHUE

'A searing but essential look at Earth after the human-induced apocalypse. Too real to be true. Too true to be real.' - BOB BROWN

'Exciting . . . ambitious . . . Juice breaks new ground to face the climate emergency.' - THE CONVERSATION

'Every machine-tooled sentence is its own reward . . . the sheer length of the novel becomes its greatest pleasure. Winton drives Juice towards its conclusion with a narrative force that feels almost cyclonic.' - GEORDIE WILLIAMSON, THE AUSTRALIAN

'A must-read masterpiece from one of Australia's most celebrated writers.' - STEPHEN ROMEI, SATURDAY PAPER

'Blistering . . . propulsive, addictive.' - JOE RUBBO, READINGS

'Full of surprises and stunning originality.' - SIMON SMART, ABC ONLINE