The Turning

Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

• Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in stories contains similar structural elements, as characters move in and out of each other’s lives in a small town.
• offers up an inversion of The Sins of the Father theme, as the title character is a complicated mother figure for her own children and the children of the small town she lives in
• Olive Kitteridge on SuperSummary

Corpus Christi by Bret Anthony Johnston

• Johnston’s collection populates a beach community with tragic figures, tracing the way community, family, and trauma are interwoven in ways that are similar to Winton’s work.
• contains similar themes of The Sins of the Father and Adolescent Obsession

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

• Alexis Wright’s story of Aboriginal people serves as an important counterpoint to Winton’s book, presenting a side of Australian culture that is often invisible or underrepresented in its literary canon.
• Similar to Winton’s book, it addresses The Influence of Class and Race on the characters’ lives.