"He lay there, muscles fluttering, like a fish on a deck, feeling the dry weight of gravity, the hard surprise of everything he already knew."

I usually avoid reading reviews until after I've finished a book. However, for some reason, I decided to check them out for The Riders.

Despite the dire warnings of many reviewers, I decided to press on as I was genuinely enjoying the beginning of the book.

I think what needs to be understood is that this is not a book about real life. Just like a gothic novel, you cannot see these characters as normal people with normal motivations and instincts. In a way, it is a portrait of two people, a man and his daughter, during a very short, very turbulent period of their lives. With any portrait, it captures a single moment, a single look and that intensifies it, sometimes to a painful degree.

Winton has painted a devastating picture of obsession and redemption. It draws inspiration from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I did not enjoy and is the single most depressing book I have ever read and I have read The Bell Jar, Prozac Nation and The Virgin Suicides. 

Scully's single-mindedness to find his wife, who has clearly abandoned them is heartbreaking because she is his Esmerelda and his Notre Dame rolled into one illusive person.

Billie comes across as far older than her seven years. In fact, I would say she reads like a forty-year-old. This isn't weird if you think of her as Scully's sanity, trying desperately to pull him back from the brink. For this reason, and because I don't read this as a general fiction novel, even as a mother myself, I don't feel as outraged at his treatment of Billie as I have of other fictional bad parents. 

When I finished it, I thought this is a book I would totally read again and believe I will gain more from it a second time.

This is my new favourite Winton. I've only read The Turning, a brilliant collection of shorts. I cannot wait to keep working through his oevre.