That Eye, the Sky.
That Eye, The Sky is an strong attempt by Australian novelist Tim Winton to blend the supernatural with the spiritual. The short novel is stuffed full of analogies to Christ, suffering, resurrection, and atonement. Yet, Winton leaves the reader with a less-than-favorable impression of the novel s Christ-like figure, a boozing, tormented, thieving, lecherous old soul named Henry Warburton. Henry, a 40ish bum who has been living near the river, appears at the door of the unhappy Flack family, a rural clan consisting of Morton (Ort for short), a pre-teen boy, Alice, a former hippy turned mom, Tegwyn, the 16-year-old sister, Grammar, an ancient living in a room waiting to die, and dad Sam, who fixes cars at a garage/roadhouse across the street.
Winton tells the story through the eyes of Ort. Sam is left near death and in a coma after a car accident. When he crashed, Sam was taking money to cover a bet for his boss, Bill Cherry. As a result, a rift develops between the two families, and it costs Ort his best friend, Fat Cherry, the Cherry s son. Sam s injury throws the family into a funk. The unhappy Tegwyn wants to chuck up school and get a job in the city. Ort, who survived a coma years earlier, wonders if his dad can see and hear those around him. Alice keeps a strong facade but Ort hears her crying at night.
Sam awakens from his coma and is taken home but is helpless, unable to walk, talk, bathe, feed, or change himself. It s at that point that Henry makes his arrival. He settles in and assumes responsibility for taking care of Sam and helping around the house, and caring for the chickens. He also secures a car for the Flacks.
Henry is by far the most compelling character in the novel. The son of an Anglican priest, he rejects his faith for the counter-culture, and it proves to be a journey through a drugged hell. Most of it was spent with his companion Bobo, a woman who disgusted him, yet stoked his desire. His loathing of time spent with Bobo is so great that Ort hears him screaming her name during nightmares. He has a brief interlude of normal life with a regular job, wife and child, but after they are killed in an accident, he loses his job and returns to the vile Bobo. She dies soon afterward. Then, he tells the Flacks, he discovered the Gospel. He converts an eager Alice and Ort, but Tegwyn resists, mocking his religion.
The theme of Winton s novel is redemption, and it s clear that Henry is trying to redeem Sam back to a normal life. There is a strong hint that Henry feels that saving Sam could also save him. Often, while Henry is alone with Sam, Ort overhears Henry talking ceaselessly to his non-responsive father. ...why I can t heal you, Sam. I m unclean. I wake up at night with her smell on me, it s thick in the room. A succubus, Sam. That s what it s like. Bobo comes back to have me. It suffocates me, I tell you. I want her and I want to escape her.
Always in the background lingers a hint of the supernatural to what is happening with the Flack family. Ort often sees a bright light shining in the sky. Henry leaves the family for days at a time, and returns looking older and more haggard, but possessed of a sort of energy that sparks the characters. The greatest strength of Winton s novel is the life he breathes into his characters. The Flacks are a feisty yet vulnerable lot, and liable to move from a heated fight to a tender embrace in a moment s time.
Despite Winton s skill, the book is marred by the fact that although never stated explicitly, it appears that Henry rapes Tegwyn near the novel s end. What s worse, mom Alice doesn t seem to mind, explaining to Ort that Henry is merely trying to bring Tegwyn to an understanding of Jesus Christ. There s no reason to add this to the plot (it may be a swipe at religion), and it s genuinely disturbing to read.