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Reading guide: The Riders by Tim Winton

Tim Winton depicts a man’s desperate quest across Europe, as he tries to track down his missing wife

Whether you’re new to The Riders or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, here is our comprehensive guide, featuring insights from critics, our judges and the book’s author, as well as discussion points and suggestions for further reading.

Published October 2, 2025

Synopsis

Fred Scully is determined to carve a new life for himself and his young family in Ireland. For months he has laboured alone to make their dilapidated cottage habitable, and now his pregnant wife and child are coming to meet him: this will be their fresh start.

But when Scully arrives at the airport to collect them, only his seven-year-old daughter Billie steps off the plane, unable to explain what’s happened to her mum.

Scully leads his daughter on a desperate quest across Europe, as he tries to track down the wife he comes to realise he didn’t really know.

The Riders was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1995. It is currently being adapted into a film, expected to be released in late 2026.

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The main characters

Scully

Husband to Jennifer and father to Billie, Scully is the novel’s main protagonist. Absorbed in fixing up a dilapidated cottage in rural Ireland for his family, he completely unravels when his wife disappears.

Billie

Scully and Jennifer’s seven-year-old daughter. She has a close relationship with her father and is traumatised by her mother’s disappearance. She accompanies her father on his desperate journey to find her.

Jennifer

Scully’s wife and Billie’s mother, Jennifer is pregnant and due to join Scully in Ireland once he’s fixed up the house. Her unexplained disappearance is at the heart of the novel.

About the author

Tim Winton has been described as one of the greatest living Australian writers. He has published numerous books, and his work has been translated into 28 languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in 1981, Winton has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.

What the critics said

Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times

‘We don’t literally believe in the ghosts, just as we don’t always believe in Billie’s precociousness. But Scully is real. His hope and his pain are as real as a slant of light, a hangover, a laugh, the smell of dirty socks; and we follow this pilgrim’s progress with a heart-catching sense of our own soul’s fragility.’

Nigel Krauth, Australian Book Review

‘The Riders is your wildest nightmare, the worst part of you, the world you’d wish you never constructed within you – provided, of course, that you are male.’

The Guardian

‘The Riders is about the painful process of learning to live without illusions, without false anticipation … Furious and vital … a celebration – of the messiness of life and of the force of good fiction.’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘Winton has forced a different kind of thinking about men and their imperatives, about the value and meaning of action … The Riders is a grand, poised, metaphorical reconciliation.’

The Times

‘At its breaking heart is a fearless exploration of how well we can ever really know each other … Winton is not a great Australian novelist; he is a great novelist full stop.’

What the author said

‘I lived in Europe for a couple of years and did a bit of travelling. I was interested in the way humans have domesticated time and space to the point of expecting certainty and predictability at every point. One day I was sitting at an airport watching people reunite rapturously, and I realised that these lovely meetings had been arranged in advance and scheduled, across vast distances and multiple time zones, down to the minute. One interruption to the schedule can cause real disruption, a couple more can pull the world down around your ears. We’ve come to expect certainty, and when we don’t get it, we want an explanation. If an explanation is not forthcoming it seems as if our whole existence is under threat. So, what happens if someone doesn’t get off the plane? And what if there’s no explanation? The title came from a story someone told me waking in the night to see lights on a beach. She thought of people riding with pitch torches – why, I don’t know, but it was the west of Ireland, so maybe these notions go deep.’

Read the full interview

‘I just rock up to the desk in the morning and hope something shows up. I figure if I don’t show up then nothing else could show up, or it could show up and I’m not there, in which case there’s a day gone – the bus has been and gone and what am I going to do with the afternoon? I just write by hand. I don’t know how to describe it, really. The process is not very intellectual. It’s not very rational. I don’t plan things. I’m just trying not to be bored.’

Read the full interview

Questions and discussion points

The first part of The Riders unfolds in rural Ireland as Scully fixes up a house for his family. It contrasts starkly with the desperate journey across mostly urban Europe that follows. What did you make of the dramatic change of setting and pace before and after Jennifer vanishes?

Jennifer is slippery and elusive, and her disappearance leaves her husband and daughter devastated. Why do you think she chooses to vanish rather than tell her husband how she feels? Would it be possible for Jennifer to disappear in this way today?

Scully seems to define himself entirely in relation to Jennifer – or the idea of her – and without her he’s adrift. In an interview with the Booker Prizes, Tim Winton says of Scully, ‘In a moment that requires reflection, he chooses precipitous action. While this is not unique to blokes, we’re pretty reliable when it comes to making this mistake.’ Why do you think Scully is so bewildered and unable to ask for help? What do you think Tim Winton’s male characters reveal about masculinity more broadly?

Before Jennifer’s disappearance Scully believes his close relationship with his young daughter is ‘a gift’. But, during their race across Europe to find Jennifer, he repeatedly puts Billie in danger. What did you make of the relationship between father and daughter? Were there any moments of neglect in the novel that shocked you? Is Scully a good dad?

Seven-year-old Billie is ‘fierce, precocious, loyal’ and terrified of losing her father. She’s unable to explain what’s happened to her mum. Tim Winton said, ‘the presence of a child changes every situation, raises the stakes somehow.’ Do you agree? How did you feel about Billie as a character?

The book is set in the 1980s and was published in the 1990s, and it contains instances of racism and sexism. How did the discriminatory language and attitudes make you feel as a contemporary reader? What do they reveal about attitudes at the time?

The weather throughout the novel is rainy, windy and cold, and Scully and Billie are often dirty and wet. Tim Winton said, ‘I’m one of those simple folks whose mood is determined by weather – one of the few character traits I share with Scully.’ What did you think of the way Winton uses weather and landscapes to create specific feelings and atmospheres?

There’s a supernatural scene by a ruined castle in the novel’s opening chapters, which is echoed later in Amsterdam, towards the end of the book. What do you think the ghostly presences in the novel mean?

The Riders is set in late 1987, just after the UK had been ravaged by what’s still known as ‘The Great Storm’ and in the aftermath of an IRA bomb blast at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen. There’s also a reference to French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the bombing of the Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, in the book. How do wider events feed into the atmosphere of the novel?

The Riders is currently being adapted into a film, 30 years after it was published and with Brad Pitt slated to play Scully. Do you think the story will work well on the big screen? Did any parts of the novel stand out for you as being especially cinematic?