Rating: 
Summary: I recommend
Review: Cracklin' prose that hauls you down into the page, two likeable vital characters at the center, and a fascinating whirlwind search for Mother Lover Lost. Somewhere past the two thirds point, when it was obvious to everyone in Creation but our hero that his wife was not worth finding, the guided world tour Winton felt obliged to take us on became a bit dragged out. Paris was extraneous, and goddamn Amsterdam. There were also many suspended elements, such as the old painter who jumped from his Grecian island cliff, which might've been developed or closed. And I never understood the function or symbolism of the Riders. Nevertheless, finely written, a worthy effort. I recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfair to readers
Review: For the first 50 pages I was sure this would become one of my favorite books of the year. I was captivated by Winton's brilliant prose and his intriguing premise: Scully's wife Jennifer flies from Australia to join him in Ireland but doesn't get off the plane. Their daughter Billie does, but won't tell what happened to her mother. I felt nicely set up for a fine tale of suspense, as Scully sets off to find Jennifer. There was indeed plenty of suspense, as well as marvelously vivid descriptions of places and people. But when I finished the book I was frustrated and enraged. Read Michael Leone's review--he expresses my feelings eloquently. Furthermore, why couldn't we learn what happened to Jennifer? The only clue is Billie's impression on the plane that her mother's face was turning to marble. Not very helpful. One must conclude that Winton doesn't want us to understand, he wants us to accept the mystery without the resolution. That seems to be the message of the horsemen who gathered near the ruined Irish castle, twice: they symbolize Scully's desperate search, his failure, and his wounded psyche. Well, my psyche wasn't wounded by this book but it was definitely let down.
Rating: 
Summary: Contrived and Implausible Stuff.
Review: I wanted to like this book, I really did. It's an interesting premise but the book sets the reader up for something and then totally fails to deliver on it. You learn nothing that you didn't already know at the start, which is nothing.You spend the first eighty pages or so with Scully fixing up his house in Ireland for his seven-year-old daughter and wife who are supposedly coming to meet him. Eighty pages of him scrubbing, grouting, plastering, shoveling, painting, broken by some chatty interludes with a minor character Peter Keneally. Unless you're Joyce or Nabokov or Proust there is no way to make these mundane activities compelling for eighty pages. I would have forgiven Winton at forty pages, but at eighty it's just too dull and the attempt at plot build-up totally off kilter. Finally, the first climax comes: Scully goes to pick up his wife and child at the airport and only the child emerges from the plane. Where is his wife? We all want to know, of course, as we've spent eighty pages waiting for her and listening to Winton tell us how much Scully is looking forward to it, but his daughter won't tell him, despite the fact that Winton gives us a brief scene with the child on the airplane (which airplane is just another one of the unsolved mysteries in this book) with her mother, so we KNOW at some point the child was with her. Billie, his daughter, will never tell him, and after a while, for no reason that I can possibly discern, other than Winton's attempt to keep up the novelty of "suspense", Scully stops asking her about it. Would you do this as a parent? Wouldn't you find some way to coax this vital info out of your seven-year-old child? But I guess the info isn't so important to Winton. Scully then decides, as though he's a private detective -- why he doesn't spend his money on a professional we'll never know, but then Winton wouldn't have a novel -- to go look for her. And he takes his daughter with him! Imagine that! A guy dragging his seven-year-old all around Europe. (Nobody in the novel even questions how abusive and unfair this is -- even after the girl suffers a vicious dog attack.) Scully flocks to Greece where he meets a variety of extremely frustrating drunks and bohemians who REFUSE to answer a question directly or provide him (or us) with any tangible information. The story at this point becomes Monty Pythonish, it's so absurd. Here is a desperate man looking for his wife and a cynical friend just toys with him: "Where is she?" "She? She?" "Come on Arthur. [...]." "Oh dear." Winton deliberately tantalizes us with the bare bones of a thriller without giving us any of the meat such a genre requires. Why? Is he being postmodern? That could be his defense, but then why does he try so hard at being "realistic"? Then Scully meets a woman, Irma, en route to Italy, who, based ona photo she plucks from his wallet, claims she saw his wife at a hotel in Greece with another woman. Aha, the reader says. Finally, a morsel of information -- we're halfway through the book now -- might be given. Another false lead. Scully doesn't believe her, I guess because Irma's a bit of a floozy, and so he hardly probes into the idea of his wife being with a woman, hardly probes into any idea at all and yet insists on going from city to city of his expat past with his daughter. He refuses to pack it in. Other coincidences abound that leave you and the characters NOWHERE and with NO ANSWERS. Scully finds himself a murder suspect in Greece, but he flees before any authority has a chance to apprehend him. Why this intrigue? An attempt to keep the pages turning, I guess. A telegram is sent to an Amex office in Florence, purportedly from his wife, telling him to meet him in Paris. She doesn't show. Was it a hoax? Why doesn't she come? Don't expect answers. I found this book to be contrived, implausible, and in the end, utterly frustrating. Scully's relationship with his wife, with his past, who he thought she was, who he thinks he is, are not remotely explored, not even superficially a la Paul Auster, and are certainly not dramatized. Scully's entire "voyage" has no point, no catharsis, no resolution. It's a big shaggy dog story. There are strengths: some of the prose is brisk and effective, the secondary characters are quite good and memorable, especially Peter Keneally and Irma, etc. The dialogue is top-notch, and unlike the story, real. It just fails to add up to a story.
Rating:
Summary: Confusing conclusion
Review: I was gripped by this book. Tim Winton's prose is electric. But the plot proliferates into something unbelievable. Yet I felt frustration, not at the author, but with myself for not being able to clearly see the truth. Perhaps like the protagonist I was searching for the reality of the story. It posed more questions and answered few. I came away feeling a bit like I'd been served a delicious appetizer, wine, vegetables, but no entree. And I'm still hungry.
Rating: 
Summary: On being an Australian
Review: If you've ever wondered what it's like to be an Australian then Scully is your man, if only because he hates the French milieu and the English expatriate as much as he loves the Irish.. Tim Winton has done all of us a great favour by remembering how to swear and when to do it, .. the dialogue is dead accurate. Scully's drunkeness is worrying and his drifting about Europe with his daughter in search if a woman disappeared could be likened to a dreamtime wandering, but you know that he's a good bloke because he can use his hands.
Rating:
Summary: Confusing conclusion
Review: Rarely has an Aussie experienced such a miserable walkabout. Scully, the protagonist of this grim novel, drags his daughter Billie through Europe in search of his vanished wife, a black haired beauty with a similarly shaded heart. Scully is an utter moron, a naive everyman. His endearing unpretentiousness is negated by a tendency to make whopping errors of judgment. Winton writes dreamy sentences that evoke place and pain, but his plot stretches plausibility. We're required to believe that a good-natured bloke like Scully could actually subject his child to such tortures. His neglect is stupefying. Gypsy girl Billie, in one of the novel's many role reversals, eventually shepherds her doofus father, her comic book Quasimodo come to life, as they chase down shadows in unfamiliar Amsterdam. This reader simply wanted the search to end, for the hapless wanderers to return to their refurbished tumble-down in County Offaly. When they finally do, the house still feels vacant, the rooms draughty and cheerless. What Scully learns from the whole ordeal, other than his own ineffectuality, is not entirely clear.
Rating:
Summary: Walkabout in Eurohell
Review: Rarely has an Aussie experienced such a miserable walkabout. Scully, the protagonist of this grim novel, drags his daughter Billie through Europe in search of his vanished wife, a black haired beauty with a similarly shaded heart. Scully is an utter moron, a naive everyman. His endearing unpretentiousness is negated by a tendency to make whopping errors of judgment. Winton writes dreamy sentences that evoke place and pain, but his plot stretches plausibility. We're required to believe that a good-natured bloke like Scully could actually subject his child to such tortures. His neglect is stupefying. Gypsy girl Billie, in one of the novel's many role reversals, eventually shepherds her doofus father, her comic book Quasimodo come to life, as they chase down shadows in unfamiliar Amsterdam. This reader simply wanted the search to end, for the hapless wanderers to return to their refurbished tumble-down in County Offaly. When they finally do, the house still feels vacant, the rooms draughty and cheerless. What Scully learns from the whole ordeal, other than his own ineffectuality, is not entirely clear.
Rating:
Summary: Becoming one with the story..
Review: This book gave me a unique opportunity to evaluate my position as a reader.. is it a spectator sport or am I a participant in the ring with the characters.. "All for one, and one for all" is Scully's motto, and his tailspin adventure with he and his daugher in search of the woman whom abandoned them both include those brave enough take the dive down with him to feel the desparation and frustration of loss for reasons unknown. It isn't a book that we can close with a clean, crisp ending. It will unnerve you to know end as you wonder what the hell happened, just as Sully will wonder for the rest of his life. The very real character trudge through this tale of loss, and redemption in unexpected forms. It's not a story to be taken for face value where the details are dim, but for the deeper, darker lessons, which are painful enough in real life that we can't even bear in a book! Don't ponder so much on what you learn (or don't) about the characters and the plot.. but instead focus on your reaction to the story and what it teaches you about yourself.
Rating:
Summary: A man , his daughter and their quest.
Review: Tim Winton the riders is a book about love. Love and the many things it forces you to do. Winton shows us a man[Scully] so in love his world becomes but clouded and he sees nothing but the best in people. He bows to his wife's demands and follows her all around the globe without a word. Winton uses Scully's wife Jennifer's disappearance as a way to show us how much love influences people. Scully and his daughter are left to fend for themselves and they struggle. Scullys world becomes clouded with this love. " Your two soft on people , you think the best of them", and he doesn't believe his wife has deserted him. Winton uses this to show us the madness of losing love as Scully gallivants around Europe in search of his lost bride dragging his child , neglecting his responsibilities as a father. With some strange references to the mysterious "Riders" possibly soldiers of the apocalypse , who knows but strange souls in torment. Scullys soul torments and yet is he to become one of them? Cleverly Jennifer's whereabouts is never revealed and we are left to wonder, what has happend.This has intrigued many of my counterparts and the majority has the feeling she is a lesbian, but who is to know. Strange people do strange things and Wintons Jennifer is nothing but strange(and sexy maybe). This is a book to intrigue and wonder about. Haunting and baffling to the end.
Rating:
Summary: Love as Obsession, Love as Salvation
Review: Tim Winton's novel "The Riders", a Booker Prize nominee, is a story about love. About different kinds of love, to be precise. Jennifer, a shadow figure, a mysterious woman with excellent legs and distorted self-esteem, abandons her unhomely but affectionate husband Scully and seven-year old daughter Billie. The novel is a story of father-and-daughter travel across Europe in search of their lost wife and mother. Scully's love to his runaway wife becomes an obsession, a kind of madness that is ready to crash and mutilate everything and everyone, including himself and his dear daughter. It increases with his inquiries at the places which he thought to be niches of mutual love and tenderness but turned out to be hideouts of disenchantment and infidelity. Scully couldn't overtake the eluding apparition of former passion but he could be rescued by other love that was always near, love of his daughter. 'Love was all you had in the end. It was like sleep, like clear water. When you fell off the world there was still love because love made the world. That's what she (i.e., Billie) believed. That's how it was.' This is not the difference between sexual and asexual love that makes sense but the difference between love as obsession and love as salvation. And it was necessary for Scully to walk a long and winding road of personal painful experience to reach the simple truth.
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