WESTERN AUSTRALIA, as the protagonist of this novel muses, is “big … thin-skinned. And rich beyond dreaming. The greatest ore deposit in the world. The nation’s quarry. China’s swaggering enabler.” Fremantle is the setting, and it’s slightly disturbing to see that Tim Winton’s observations could be echoed by inhabitants of almost any big Western city. It’s all there: the grime, the rubbish, the coffee shops, the beggars, the yoga bunnies in Birkenstocks, the yummy mummies, the hipsters. Winton’s protagonist, Tom Keely, surveys all this from his high-level flat. It is on one of his rare forays for booze and food that he bumps into a figure from his past, and his solipsism is shattered by the need to make a series of moral choices. To b