The Riders, a Novel by Tim Winton

Some time books can capture the nature and experience of edgy pop culture and still retain a modicum of literary integrity.  Authors like Chuck Palahnuik and Charles Bukowski exemplify a gritty paradigm of writing and literary prowess as their work is exceptionally strange-evocative-offensive-intentional and authentic.  Others write powerful works that fuse metaphysical and spiritual symbolism to with the characters experience in order to show them in the presence of a life greater than themselves, Leif Enger's Peace Like a River and Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses are works of this nature, the characters experiencing life changing events in the context of a world outside of their control.  These are, obviously, not exhaustive lists and I could go on and on and on about the successes of gritty, spiritual, authentic writers who achieve something exceptional in their work.  When the components come together and the reader is able to experience the characters world the works of authors like those I've mentioned is profound and effective.  However when they fail, even slightly, the work becomes self indulgent prattle.  The Riders by Tim Winton is self indulgent prattle.

The novel is about an Australian, blue collar, expatriate, Scully, who has recently finished a two year stint living, working, travelling Europe with his beautiful wife, Jennifer, and their young daughter, Billie.  The opening chapters of the novel are about Scully remodeling an ancient gardener's cottage in the country side of Ireland, preparing a place for his family to finally settle.  Jennifer and Billie are in Australia wrapping up wrapping up their affairs before they join him to start a new life.  In anxious anticipation Scully works, drinks, and befriends a couple of locals, in the process he sees the spirits of a group of horse riding warriors who inhabit the ruined castle on the hill above his new home.  When his family arrives it is just Billlie, en route to Ireland Jennifer abandoned her daughter and disappeared.  The novel is Scully's quest across Europe to find his wife.

Winton doesn't ever take the time to flesh out the spirits of the riders who haunt the castle, they appear as gypsies in the middle of the novel and again as warriors at the end but nothing about them is ever resolved.  Scully is an "everyman" character with whom it is easy to identify but he becomes at one to resourceful and to stupid and by the end of the novel I was completely indifferent about him bordering on contempt.  As a reader we should really become endeared to his daughter Billie or have something beyond "great legs" for his phantom wife but they become static and lifeless as the book degrades into an author writing for the sound of his own voice, as it were, and failing to be authentic to his story.