Synopses & Reviews
After traveling through Europe for two years, Scully and his wife Jennifer wind up in Ireland, and on a mystical whim of Jennifer's, buy an old farmhouse which stands in the shadow of a castle. While Scully spends weeks alone renovating the old house, Jennifer returns to Australia to liquidate their assets. When Scully arrives at Shannon Airport to pick up Jennifer and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, it is Billie who emerges -- alone. There is no note, no explanation, not so much as a word from Jennifer, and the shock has left Billie speechless. In that instant, Scully's life falls to pieces.
The Riders is a superbly written and a darkly haunting story of a lovesick man in a vain search for a vanished woman. It is a powerfully accurate account of marriage today, of the demons that trouble relationships, of resurrection found in the will to keep going, in the refusal to hold on, to stand still. The Riders is also a moving story about the relationship between a loving man and his tough, bright daughter.
Synopsis
An exploration of marriage and the rich relationship that can exist between father and daughter, The Riders is a gorgeously wrought novel from the award-winning author Tim Winton.
After traveling through Europe for two years, Scully and his wife Jennifer wind up in Ireland, and on a mystical whim of Jennifer's, buy an old farmhouse which stands in the shadow of a castle. While Scully spends weeks alone renovating the old house, Jennifer returns to Australia to liquidate their assets. When Scully arrives at Shannon Airport to pick up Jennifer and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, it is Billie who emerges--alone. There is no note, no explanation, not so much as a word from Jennifer, and the shock has left Billie speechless. In that instant, Scully's life falls to pieces.
The Riders is a superbly written and a darkly haunting story of a lovesick man in a vain search for a vanished woman. It is a powerfully accurate account of marriage today, of the demons that trouble relationships, of resurrection found in the will to keep going, in the refusal to hold on, to stand still. The Riders is also a moving story about the relationship between a loving man and his tough, bright daughter.
Synopsis
An "intelligent...artfully rendered" (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of marriage and the rich relationship that can exist between father and daughter, The Riders is a gorgeously wrought novel from the award-winning author Tim Winton. After traveling through Europe for two years, Scully and his wife Jennifer wind up in Ireland, and on a mystical whim of Jennifer's, buy an old farmhouse which stands in the shadow of a castle. While Scully spends weeks alone renovating the old house, Jennifer returns to Australia to liquidate their assets. When Scully arrives at Shannon Airport to pick up Jennifer and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, it is Billie who emerges--alone. There is no note, no explanation, not so much as a word from Jennifer, and the shock has left Billie speechless. In that instant, Scully's life falls to pieces.
The Riders is a superbly written and a darkly haunting story of a lovesick man in a vain search for a vanished woman. It is a powerfully accurate account of marriage today, of the demons that trouble relationships, of resurrection found in the will to keep going, in the refusal to hold on, to stand still. The Riders is also a moving story about the relationship between a loving man and his tough, bright daughter.
About the Author
Tim Winton
Tim Winton was born in 1960 in Perth, Western Australia, where he grew up amid
a landscape to which he is still inextricably tied: the untouched white beaches, the
gray-blue range of hills. He says, "You can never free yourself from the landscape; the
minute you turn away, it starts reaching for your imagination again. It's often said that
people make God in their own image and likeness. They forget the way that God is
camouflaged against the environment. Wherever incarnated, God is also hidden."
All his adult life he was told he was European, but when he traveled to Europe
for the first time he understood that he is not, that in reality, he is Australian. "The
landscape where my grandparents and my parents and I had grown up had
changed us from whatever the people in my family were when they first got to
these shores....Whatever they were like then, isn't who we are now. The land has
affected us."
"Right from the start I was aware of my own strange geographic isolation.
Western Australia is a huge and remote region, a long way from the cultural and
publishing centers of Australia, not to mention Europe and the U.S.A. I was twenty
years younger than most people publishing books, and this fact, along with where
I lived, made me something of an oddity. In my twenties I found myself writing
books while helping to raise three children and somehow I survived both
experiences without leaving my own region."
The Riders is about Scully, a man dislocated from his native land of Australia.
Its genesis came from a period at the end of the 1980s where, granted a
scholarship by a private Australian foundation, Winton and his family lived for a
long time in Paris, then in the Irmah Midland, and finally on the Greek island of
Hydra in the Saronic Gulf. "My wife did not disappear and I didn't undergo the
kind of ordeal that I grimly put mycharacter through," he says. He remembers
though, leaving the manuscript of another novel on a bus in Rome, and worse,
helping his wife suture his son's scalp where a dog had mauled him in Greece.
Young Winton was first attracted to writing through the stories from his church.
"It's narrative nature appealed to me instantly," he says. "I think that was
probably my education in a way." In addition, he read voraciously books from the
town library where his mother took him once or twice a week, and from a beach
house which had one room wall to ceiling with books.
Winton knew from an early age that he would be a writer. "I guess I decided
to be a writer at age ten. Until then, I wanted to be a cop, like my father, but I
think I saw what a hard and joyless life that could be, so I went for what I
imagined to be a softer option. I was very clear and dogmatic about it," he says.
"I can still remember insisting that I would be a writer and arguing about it with
a teacher who wouldn't take it seriously. For some reason, I was possessed of this
focus." He wrote stories and poems and drew pictures, most likely, he says, to
adorn his world. "In a lot of ways I was compensating for the plainness of my
culture," he says. "The absence of color in both my church and culture seems like
a gift in retrospect, rather than a handicap."
By the age of sixteen, he was submitting stories and poems to magazines. He
says, "I had all the walls and half the ceiling papered with rejection slips from
magazines in the shed I lived in at the back of my parents place. But sooner or
later I got good enough." Which was certainly true -- during his late teens he
began to be published in national magazines. By the time Winton was nineteen
years old he wrote and published his first novel, An Open Swimmer which won
the Australian/Vogel National Literary Award. The money from thishelped to
begin life as a professional writer. He did attend university for four years,
describing himself as a hopeless student, but nonetheless managed to write two
novels and numerous stories during that time.
Winton quickly became a sophisticated writer with a great following -- a rarity
in Australia. That Eye, The Sky has become one of Winton's most popular books.
He has twice won the Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary
award, for Shallows (1984) and Cloudstreet (1991). In addition, much of
Winton's work has been adapted for stage and film.
Tim Winton lives with his wife and children in Western Australia, where he
grew up, and where he continues to write. He remarks on his profession "It is an
odd business -- sitting in a room writing about people who don't exist for people
I may never meet. It's wonderful to communicate with strangers this way, from
an isolated coast s
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Discussion Points - Winton has been acclaimed for his evocation of place. What details in The Riders evokes its settings, and what is the relation between Winton's settings and his themes?
- At various times, Winton deviates from his third person narration by changing the point of view, giving voice to other characters, such as Arthur Lipp, Jimmy Brereton, Billie, Irma, and perhaps even Jennifer. Why does he do this? What effect does it have on you? Do these passages enhance the story?
- Scully thinks of himself as the primary parent -- the true caregiver of Billie. Yet under his care, Billie is dragged all over Europe. She is rarely fed, is up at all hours, accompanies her father into bars, and is mauled by a vicious dog. Is Scully simply unaware of what he is doing to Billie? Is keeping Billie with him and never abandoning her enough to make him the parent he sees himself as? Is Scully a good parent?
- Billie gets off the airplane traumatized. Why doesn't Scully try to get more information from her, especially once Billie resumes talking? At one point Winton writes, "God, how he wished he could ask her again, know what had happened at Heathrow. But he couldn't push her now." By not forcing Billie to open up and tell him what happened, is Scully just avoiding the truth? Were you disappointed that Scully didn't push her further? If he'd pushed her to tell him more, would it have been harmful for them both, or beneficial? Why might Winton have made this choice?
- Why do you think Scully didn't contact the police? Why might Scully have chosen to search for her himself, in effect running himself? Do you think he was surprised Jennifer had it in her to take off like that? What is the dark side of this love?
- As Scully becomes more and more unhinged, Billie finds it necessary to take care of him. She takes the money from his pocket and holds onto it herself. She cleans him while he sleeps, and when they are on the boat, she watches over him. Why did Winton reverse their roles? What significance does this have for Scully and for Billie, for their family? Later, on the boat when Scully opens his eyes and comes out of his stuporous sleep, Billie looks him in the eye and simply says, "Me." What did she mean by this?
- A picture of Jennifer emerges in the course of the novel. Describe who you think Jennifer really is. Does Scully truly know her? What does she want? What was Jennifer looking for that Scully couldn't provide? How do you feel about Jennifer at the beginning of the book? How do you feel about her when it becomes obvious that she's purposefully left her husband and child?
- Scully gets an unexpected view of Jennifer from her painting teacher. The teacher confides, "No artistic instincts whatsoever....She's something of a snob, a dilettante. She wants recognition. She wants to be more interesting." Are these acceptable reasons for a woman to run away and desert her husband and child? What do you think of such reasons, such needs? Are they ever acceptable?
- What really happened to Jennifer? What clues does Winton provide us with? Did it bother you that Winton never really let us know exactly what happened?
- "People like you," Jennifer used to say to Scully. "You don't get it, do you? You like your life just fine, you take whatever comes with a sick kind of gratitude. That's where we're different." He had to agree. He just didn't get it. What is it that Scully doesn't get? What might be Scully's view of life? Does Scully pay in the end for his vision of life? Where does it lead him? What do you think of Winton's vision of contemporary marriage? Of life?
- Throughout the story there are many references to Scully's unaffractive physical looks -- his rugged face, his unruly hair -- and to the fear he could sometimes inspire from his looks alone. Yet there was also much mention of his kindness, of his gentle nature. What might have been the point of this? What might Winton be trying to say about appearance and truth? Winton also makes some parallels between Scully and the comic book character, Quasimodo, with whom Billie is so captivated. What is the significance of this?
- Irma tells Scully that she thinks they are alike. Do you agree with her? In what ways might this be so? What do you think Irma wants from Scully? What does it mean for Scully when he finally steals her money? What kind of passage is this for him? What would you have done in a similar situation? After Scully betrays Irma, he stumbles his way into Notre Dame, "and is confronted by the bigness he has always suspected arches over him. He has grown up with some apprehension of the divine. Now he has an almost physical confrontation with it -- both with his own mortality and with the probability that he's being observed by more than the two people who took part in his fall. What does this scene mean to you?
- Why might Winton have chosen an Amsterdam sex shop, specifically among the dildos, as the denouement of his novel? Is this effective and/or fitting? Discuss why or why not?
- Would the story have been substantially different had a woman and a child been deserted by a man? if so, in what ways? Are we more conditioned as a society to a story of a man leaving his wife and child, rather than the other way around? If so, why might this be?
- Who are the riders? What are they doing and why? Where else do they appear in the novel, besides outside the castle? What is their significance? Why did Winton title the book after them? Are they real or a figment of Scully's imagination? What do they mean to Scully? In effect, what is Scully choosing when he chooses to abandon the riders? What can we learn from Scully's choice?
Recommended Readings The Aunt's Story, Patrick White
Penguin, 1993
An Autobiography: To the Island; An Angel at My Table; Envoy from Mirror City, Janet Frame
Braziller, 1991
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
Penguin, 1971
Mother of Pearl, Mary Morrisey
Scribner, 1994
A Family Madness, Thomas Keneally
Touchstone, 1993
The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway
Vintage Books, 1981
The Fat Man in History, Peter Carey
Vintage Books, 1993
The Heather Blazing, Colm Toibin
Penguin, 1993
Moses Supposes Stories, Ellen Currie
Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995
Paddy Clark, Ha Ha Ha, Roddy Doyle
Penguin, 1995
Voss, Patrick White
Penguin, 1984