Tim Winton - Juice (Picador, 2024) ****

Set in a dystopian future, somewhere in Australia, a man and a girl are being held captive by an armed man, and locked up underground in a former mine. The man has to explain, to justify who he is in order to persuade his captor to let them live. The book tells the story of the man, like a modern-day Sheherazade, trying to persuade their captor, story after story to extend the time they have to live, or to be convincing enough to be released. As a consequence, this is a thick book. 

The environment plays a key role as backdrop: the world is scorched, people have to live underground for half the year to avoid the blisters they get from the sun, while cultivating their land and collecting water for the other half of the year to be able to survive. The environment is harsh, and so are the people. They distrust one another, they trade out of necessity, and strangers are always suspect and risk to rob you of all your belongings. 

The narrator gets recruited by The Service, a vague and secret organisation that keeps order and attacks the few oligarchs and corporate dynasties who live in all unimaginable wealth in self-constructed hidden places and palaces. The attacks are a kind of retribution, an act of vengeance for the world they destroyed.

The world is brutal, harsh, violent. Even his relationship with his mother is one of distance and secrecy, despite the fact that they live together. His relationship with his partner is also transactional more than a relationship of love. 

Even if the destruction of our environment is the theme of the book, its reflection on human interaction, on social and psychological consequences are as important. 

You may say that the subject is not very original, that many other books and movies cover the same subject, and that is of course true, but Winton's approach is sufficiently disconcerting, unique and compelling to stand out in this long list of dystopian literature. Winton writes with power, in a style that reflects the experience and the personality of the narrator. Like his almost voiceless captor, you wonder whether or not he is telling the truth, whether all the details he provides are invented or real, whether all his efforts to work for The Service have actually happened or not. 

And maybe that is the most interesting part of the novel. You have to listen and assess what's being said. Like the captor, you know the narrator has an agenda, one that must make him the good guy, so that he can hope to live in the end. 

Up to you to decide whether you keep him alive or not.