That Eye the Sky Tim Winton 1986

Dustjacket synopsis:
"The very moment the ute drived by Ort Flack's father ploughs into a roadside tree, the whole world goes out of kilter.

"Ort knows the sky is watching. He knows what it means to watch; he spends long hours listening at doors and peering through cracks. Things are terribly wrong. His father is withering away, his sister is consumed by hatred, his grandmother is all inside herself, and his mother, a flower-child of the 1960s, is brave but helpless. When a strange man appears at their door, Ort Flack's world is thrown into chaos, and the Otherworld begins to encroach.

"That Eye The Sky is a novel about the miraculous power of love, about a boy's visions of the world beyond, about the blurry distinctions between the natural and the supernatural."

First Paragraph

Dad has the ute going outside. I am behind Mum. Her dress has got flowers all on it, none of them much to look at. Her bum moves around when she laughs. Dad always says she has a bum like an angry mob which means nothing to me but a lot to him, I reckon. I can hear the rooster crorking out the back. He's a mean rooster - goes for your pills when you collect the eggs.

'Seeyaz.' That's Dad going. He revs the ute up. He's in a hurry, going to town for Mr Cherry.

'Wave him off, Ort,' Mum says to me. She always reckons you should show people you love them when they go away because you might never see them again. They might die. The world might end. But Dad's only going to town for an hour. It's business for Mr Cherry. And there he goes, out the drive and onto the road.

From the McPhee Gribble hardback edition, 1986.

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Last modified: February 14, 2002.