Our verdict on Juice by Tim Winton: The Australian climate novel is a hit

The New Scientist Book Club in January moved on from reading about sex robot emancipation with Sierra Greer Annie Botto a searing vision of Australia many generations from now in February with Tim Winton Juice.

Winton’s story follows an unnamed narrator as he recounts his life in this overheated world. We gradually come to understand the job he was recruited to do – exacting revenge on the descendants of those who brought the world to its knees with climate change – and what it takes to survive.

I thought Juice it was absolutely brilliant: gripping, terrifying and beautifully written. But what did the book club members say? There was a furious discussion about this novel Facebook page, largely positive. Glen Johnson “loved it” and thought Winton did a “fantastic job”. “All his descriptions of adaptations in a climate zone I know quite well (I lived in Perth WA for 18 years) seemed so natural, despite being so different from current practice,” he writes. “Almost a natural adaptation of the ever resourceful country Australian.”

I know Victor Churchill. “I found it utterly compelling—dark in places, yet managing to maintain an air of positivity in the face of all the tribulations,” he writes. “I had some quibbles with the plot, but overall I found this to be a very engaging – if uncomfortable in parts – read. The author takes the time to let the protagonist figure out what’s going on, so you, the reader, will have some jaw-dropping moments when you see what’s going on behind the dispassionate language.”

Kim Woodhams Crawford was also a big fan: “I found it to be a place with the potential for climate disaster – no matter what your politics, there’s zero chance the future will turn out like this, especially here where it peaked at 42 degrees earlier this week.”

However, not all were so seized. “Honestly, I didn’t like the first 18 pages. I almost gave up, but I decided to read the next 18. I’m very glad I did. Once the narrator started his story, the novel really picked up and I was quickly hooked,” says Linda Jones. Phil Gurski was another to criticize the “very slow start”.

There were also mixed feelings about the way Winton chose to tell his story – some liked the way our imprisoned protagonist told it, others weren’t so sure. “To me, it has an almost magical, realism-like feel to it with the whole singing for your life and telling the whole life story,” writes Gosia Furmanik. Jacqueline Ferrand was not so convinced. “In this case of a dystopian future, a complete stranger would want to listen to the sum total of your past life,” he asks. And Steve Swan wouldn’t be as patient as the man with the bow who listened to the story. “If I was the third party, I probably would have shot him by now,” he writes.

One issue that got people talking was whether or not Juice is dystopian. Winton wrote about this for us in an essay in which he said, “Sometimes I think we use the word dystopia like an opiate. It serves as a softener, a tool of distance. And I don’t think we can afford that.” Members really dug into this topic.

“It didn’t feel ‘dystopian’ to me,” writes Victor. “I would associate that word with novels that describe a society suffering and struggling under, say, an autocratic regime or in the throes of an ongoing disaster; whereas this book could perhaps be described as post-dystopian: people are in the world they’re in, they’ve adapted their lives where they can to cope, and they continue to do so.”

“We won’t know if it’s dystopian until we have a few more generations,” adds Margaret Buchanan. “The temperatures I experienced recently in Australia would tell me it’s not a dystopian novel.”

However, Niall Leighton strongly disagreed. “The issue seems to be a semantic one, whether the actual feeling of living in dystopian conditions can be described as living in a dystopia,” he writes. “Winton’s novel is clearly set in a dystopia for me, but so are the real lives of many people I know, with probably most people going deeper and deeper into it to one degree or another.”

Niall also brought up an interesting point – one I’ll be thinking about for a while. Does writing a dystopian vision of the future help avoid that future? “If we are to be a revolution, I quote Shevekwe have to be able to imagine it,” he writes. “I agree with Tim Winton that we cannot afford to distance ourselves from reality. I strongly disagree that we need more of these dystopian warnings.” What he thinks we need are stories “of a place we can hope to build, where we all want to live, where all forms of discrimination and hierarchy have been abolished. I know it’s hard (I’m trying!), but we need it more than we need Juice.”

Meanwhile, Gosia had some guesses about the plausibility: “I’m not convinced about that [with] all that archival material… service [would have] decided the best course of action was to kill the descendants of the fossil fuel oligarchs instead of educating the general population and trying to regenerate the Earth,” he writes. “So I feel like the motivation was more retribution than change. And in the end they failed and the climate kept getting worse, so it seems like it was all for naught.”

What did people think of the ending? Personally, I liked the glimmer of hope offered to us if we choose to take it, and the open ending – but then I enjoy that sort of thing (hello Stranger Things). I know Samantha de Vaux. “Would I have written a more hopepunk ending? Maybe, but I tried to embrace it because it’s a story we’re being told that belongs to the author and his characters, not me,” she writes. “I enjoyed this difficult book and the ending because it challenged and engaged me on a visceral level.”

For now, it’s time to put Winton’s story aside—dystopian or not—and move on to March reading. This time we try non-fiction, albeit non-fiction with a generous dollop of culture: Daisy Fancourt Art Cure: The Science of How Art Transforms Our Health. Fancourt is a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, and she’s here to tell us about how art can really improve our lives – that it’s the “forgotten fifth pillar of health” alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature. Her essay here, written exclusively for the New Scientist Book Club, gives you a taste, and this extract from the book is a fascinating look at how one man who had a stroke found that art classes changed his life. Sign up to read along with us here and join our Facebook group to discuss the book here.

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