Book Review of That Eye, The Sky by Tim Winton :: Book Review

I have chosen to read the book â€Å"That Eye, The Sky† by Tim Winton. The front cover isn’t very appealing- it has a picture of a house in the outback, with the night-sky covering it. I have picked this book because one of the school librarians have recommended it to me, and said that it is a very moving book. And that it will expand my vocabulary. The blurb suggests that ‘That Eye, The Sky’ has little bit to do with the supernatural, which I’m a bit wary of. I don’t enjoy reading books that haven’t much to do with things â€Å"out of this world†. Actually, I don’t really enjoy reading books that are written about things outside of what I know as familiar. But we’ll see how I go. The main character in this story is Morton â€Å"Ort† Flack, and he is twelve years old. He lives in outback Western Australia with his mother, father, older sister, Tegwyn (I have had so much trouble with the pronunciation of her name!), and his grandma. His mum is a housewife and works on their farm, I’m not sure what his dad would be classified as but he works for Ort’s best friend’s dad, Bill Cherry, who he is obliged to run personal errands for. Ort looks up very much to his father, and his parents are very much in love. His sister is a typical sixteen-year-old. She constantly fights with her parents, rebels against everything and practises self-mutilation- â€Å"Real careful she takes the smoke out of her mouth and looks at the hot end and put it in one of her tits and shivers†- (ok, maybe that last part isn’t typical but she is a teenager living in the bush with nowhere to go and no chance to have friends or get out of the bush so I, as a teenager, can justify why she would do something like that). It is never mentioned what his grandmother is suffering from but I’ve made the assumption that it’s something along the lines of Alzheimer’s- she doesn’t remember anything and has slowly withered away. Ort as the youngest likes to make sure everyone is living their lives alright so he spies on his sister, grandma and parents just to see what they do when they don’t know anybody’s watching. I thought this part was a bit perverted at first, but it can be translated as his way of feeling safe and making sure everyone else is safe.