Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Turning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Memory
Family, Violence, and Love
Addiction
Belonging and Escape
Regret and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
The narrator (Jackie), a thirteen-year-old girl, is charmed by the local bad boy, Boner McPharlin. Boner is two years older than her and is eventually expelled during her first year of high school, in 1970. Nevertheless, stories about his exploits are ubiquitous. Jackie becomes enamored with him from afar; her best friend, Erin, does not approve. Boner’s misdeeds include a long list of elaborate pranks; he is also blamed for things Jackie does not believe he did, including burning down the school. After he is expelled, Boner starts working at the meatworks like Boner's father; they both share the nickname Boner because they work in the boning room. In the meantime, Jackie and Erin begin to see other boys, but only casually; Erin has better luck, and an implicit competition between them emerges.
Told as a flashback, this story finds Jackie reflecting on her memories of Boner McPharlin and the impact he had on her life. Set around the same time as “Long, Clear View,” “Big World,” and several other stories, her experiences take place against the backdrop of the 1970s, as economic decline gives way to social turmoil and the proliferation of drugs in Angelus. This story features Boner, the boy who fascinated the young Vic Lang, up close, tying together both the history of Angelus and the story of police corruption that the reader (and the Langs) has thus far only partially understood.
Themes
Two years pass, and Boner acquires his distinctive car, a garishly tricked-out van. Much to Erin’s chagrin, Jackie agrees to take a ride with him. While nothing sexual happens between them—Boner only wants to drive around town in silence—Erin is aghast, and rumors spread quickly. In the popular imagination, Jackie has become Boner’s moll. Jackie does nothing to contradict these rumors; she even plays into them. Nevertheless, her drives with Boner are chaste and largely silent, either around or out of town, with Boner hardly ever moving from behind the wheel. They are careful to be discreet, and Jackie’s parents do not catch on. She wonders, however, if they even care; Jackie’s father is a strict, unlikeable building inspector, and Jackie’s mother, she learns much later, is addicted to valium.
Both Boner’s strange social position—simultaneously an antihero and an outcast—and the ostracization Jackie experiences after becoming his “moll,” at least in the public eye, suggest the rigid social hierarchy of her school, and of Angelus in general. Similarly, it is also clear that her peers pass judgment based on surface-level impressions, giving little consideration to the actual nature of Boner and Jackie’s relationship or Boner’s personality. Jackie’s parents make clear that the process of social decay in Angelus is hardly exclusive to the young, and indeed has its direct routes in the decisions of her parents’ generation.
Themes
Jackie and Boner keep driving around, but their friendship remains sexless, despite the rumors circulating about them. Jackie pierces Boner’s ears, a rare moment of physical intimacy. As her peers begin to shun her, Jackie starts to spend time with other “rough chicks.” She soon discovers that they are not like her; she is merely playacting at a life they live and feels utterly alone at school. Over time, Jackie becomes dissatisfied with Boner’s placidity. She also discovers an aptitude for studying she did not know she had, quickly becoming a top student. Eventually, she declines Boner’s invitation for a ride.
Jackie’s struggles to find her place in Angelus suggest that the problem is not her inability to fit in but rather the lack of room in a small, downwardly mobile town like Angelus for people like her who do not easily conform to social norms. Discovering who she is and who she wants to be, Jackie finds that Boner—just as enigmatic a character as she—is sometimes a crucial pillar of support and sometimes a hindrance to her growth and development.
Themes
Jackie and her parents take a customary summer trip to Perth where, looking at the university, she realizes that Jackie’s father lives in regret over his unrealized dream of being an architect. She resolves to leave Angelus at the first opportunity, and in the new, final school year commits herself to studying, removing herself from social life. Boner, in the meantime, has been fired from the meatworks and is spotted around town in different cars; rumors spread of various crimes and illicit undertakings. Drugs arrive in Angelus; a girl overdoses at the school social, which Jackie does not attend. More overdoses soon follow.
Jackie, like Vic Lang and many other characters in the book, must reckon with her parents’ failures and regrets. Also like Vic, Jackie responds to her parents’ failures by committing herself to school as a means of escaping Angelus, both literally in the future and socially in the interim. The overdoses this story mentions are the same Vic overdoses that hears about in “Long, Clear View,” marking the beginning of the decline of Angelus.
Themes
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That winter, Boner is found on the beach with his legs broken. When, after two days, Jackie is allowed to visit him, he is still unable to speak; a tall, redheaded detective asks to see Jackie’s arms, presumably to check for needle marks. Jackie continues to visit Boner; once he is able to speak, he rambles incoherently about his family, the meatworks, and accusations that he is “unreliable.” One day he is discharged, and Jackie does not see him for some time. In the interim, she is stopped on the street by a nervous, sickly-looking police officer (Bob Lang) who she saw at the hospital. She recognizes the man, Bob Lang, from a local news story about a rescue on the mountain. Lang tells Jackie that if Boner tells her anything she should come to him: he says he only needs names, the names of “the two from out of town.”
Boner’s legs being broken is a pivotal in the history of Angelus and the life stories of many of its residents. As Bob alluded to in “Commission,” Boner was seen with the detectives earlier that day. While Jackie does not know this, her instincts serve her well in her skepticism toward the detectives. Unlike Jackie, the reader can infer from contextual clues the likely meaning of Boner’s ramblings: fearing he would somehow betray or fail them, the detectives broke Boner’s legs as a warning, or a punishment. The Bob Lang that Jackie encounters is still trying to unravel the mystery, a hope he will soon give up on.
Themes
The next day, Jackie goes to see Boner at his home for the first time. Meeting Boner’s father, she learns Boner’s real name is Gordon; he lives in a separate hut, behind his father’s house. Boner is making a shark-fishing harpoon and asks Jackie to go fishing. Surprisingly, their fishing trip on the beach is pleasurable, and through similar activities, Jackie and Boner reconnect; she does not tell him about her encounter with Bob Lang or ask him more about what happened to him. They enjoy their time together, Jackie works hard at school, and time passes, with little attention paid to the rumors spread about them.
Boner and Jackie are able to spend time together normally again because they each find with the other one of, if not the only, nonjudgmental relationships available to them in Angelus. While this relationship has clear benefits, it also allows them to paper over what has happened, a deliberate refusal to pry at painful memories that Jackie will later come to regret.
Themes
Over Christmas, Jackie meets a boy named Charlie in Perth, with whom she shares her first kiss. Back in Angelus, she sees Boner at the gas station and almost goes up to him when his nervous expression warns her off; an unfamiliar car pulls up to his and she decides to walk away. Jackie excels academically, becoming the school prefect and winning a history prize. Boner teaches her to drive. Charlie and his friends come to visit her, but their clear contempt for Angelus makes Jackie ashamed. Her relationship with Charlie is driven more by curiosity than any genuine feeling, and quickly fades away. Jackie gets her own driver’s license and, once again, see Boner less and less.
Jackie’s dissatisfaction with Charlie makes clear that her sexless relationship with Boner is not a complete fluke, foreshadowing her future preference for same-sex partners. Charlie’s visit also exposes a degree of sensitivity that Jackie feels regarding both Boner and Angelus; while she has no particular love for the town and wants to leave as soon as possible, she finds Charlie’s judgment condescending and insulting.
Themes
Final exams come and go; Jackie excels in all subjects but French. When she leaves school after the last exam, Boner is waiting for her, to her surprise. He has made her a gift: a small shark made of steel. He informs her that he is planning a large bonfire party on the beach that Friday and instructs her to invite her friends; Jackie wonders what friends she has to invite. Jackie invites no one, but when she arrives at the party there are already at least 100 attendees. She considers how so many of the guests mocked her and Boner behind their backs and is full of anger at their dishonesty.
Boner’s gift surprises Jackie, both as she has kept her distance from him lately and because the quiet, emotionally distant Boner rarely expresses his appreciation for her so explicitly.
Themes
The party goes all night, and Boner is overjoyed. Jackie watches the fireworks, paying close attention to a burning kite overheard. She reflects on how the party reminds her of her favorite books. Boner, who has attached a deep-sea fishing chair to one of his cars, is intent on shark fishing, throwing chum into the water during the party. Towards the end of the night the line catches, and after much difficulty, they haul in a shark, which Boner kills with his homemade harpoon. Within two days, Jackie has left Angelus for good.
Boner’s beach bonfire party ties together several other stories in the book, including “Big World,” whose characters are also in attendance. Unlike for that narrator and Biggie, however, for Jackie the transition is quite real, as she leaves Angelus almost immediately after.
Themes
At university in the city, Jackie thinks little of Angelus, her family, or her old friends. Her parents visit her, not the other way around. Once, encountering Erin on a bus, she is anxious to escape her. Only after graduating does she travel to her parents. Seeing Boner outside a bar, she notices that he does not look well. He invites her for a ride, but as she has to meet her parents, she tells him she will visit him the next day. When Jackie arrives, Boner is passed out with a pipe and the smell of marijuana in the air. He wakes up and rambles incoherently, threatening to kill an unknown person with his harpoon and angrily sending her away.
Jackie’s departure from Angelus is both abrupt and nearly total, as she has spent years there feeling little to no connection with the community. While she worries about the downward trajectory of Boner’s life, Jackie feels both incapable of helping and not responsible for doing so, particularly after he rebuffs her so strangely and aggressively.
Themes
Jackie moves even further; first to other parts of Australia, then overseas. Jackie’s father dies, and Jackie’s mother soon after; only before her death does Jackie learn about her addiction. Jackie briefly dates an Irishwoman named Ethna before going into business with her importing antiques. She feels lost and alone, still adrift despite her travels. One day in 1991, Jackie is asked by the police to come to Angelus: Boner is in custody and Boner's father is dead.
The near-total contrast between growing up in Angelus and Jackie’s cosmopolitan, international adult life emphasizes the degree to which she has decisively broken with the past. Indeed, it seems that nothing else could bring her back to Angelus but Boner.
Themes
Having expected Boner to be accused of murder, Jackie is surprised by what she finds in Angelus. Boner is in the hospital; Boner’s father died in his sleep, and Boner was found in a state of shock, hiding in a shed. The detectives called Jackie because Boner has no other family. Boner was badly cut, wearing shark jaws around his neck, and had a large stash of weapons, drugs, and “disturbing pornography.” Boner is going to be committed to a psychiatric hospital; the detectives want Jackie to travel with him to comfort him. When Jackie sees Boner, covered in cuts and bruises, she cries.
Though he has not seen Jackie in many years, Boner has clearly indicated—or the detectives otherwise somehow know—that Jackie is the closest thing he has left to family, leading the detectives to call her to Angelus. While Jackie is not entirely surprised by his condition, she is not prepared for the emotional impact it will have on her.
Themes
That afternoon Jackie goes to Boner’s house, which has been torn apart; everything is broken, and there is a harpoon driven through the bed. Next to it, she finds Boner’s pornography: old pornography magazines, with the model’s genitals burnt out by cigarette butts, and cutouts of Jackie’s face taped over theirs. Jackie is devastated and decides to leave immediately. As she does, she sees the same detective as before and another tall, redheaded detective arriving. They ask if she wants to talk, but she declines, agreeing to meet them tomorrow to pick up Boner. The next day on their drive Boner mostly sleeps, occasionally mumbling an incoherent phrase, “eat though young,” or “eat thy young,” or even “eat their young.”
Jackie is extremely disturbed by Boner’s pornography, particularly by the disjunction between the fact that she is the only close friend Boner has left and the warped, violent sexual desire he has expressed for her. Boner’s incoherent rambling, which may be a reference to sharks, is impossible for Jackie—or the reader—to decipher, though it may contain crucial clues about what has happened to him.
Themes
Boner is never released from the hospital he is moved to. Jackie visits him only at New Year’s, still full of disgust for him. His condition varies and he often speaks incoherently. He develops crippling arthritis, too, and is confined to a wheelchair. In the meantime, Jackie’s life goes on; she buys Ethna out of their business, continues on alone, and moves into a houseboat on the marina. She avoids seeing Boner more often, as it upsets the fragile balance of her life.
Jackie is able to find some stability in her life, not through resolving her past trauma related to Boner but through effectively compartmentalizing it. While this allows her to go on more or less as normal, she is also aware that this balancing act cannot last forever.
Themes
On New Year’s, Jackie visits Boner. Whispering, he tells her that “Santa’s helpers came early for Christmas,” referring to the “same four, same cunts” over and over. Jackie asks him who he means, but he cannot or will not say. He soon turns on her, rejecting her overtures to their friendship and personally insulting her. His rant then returns to the previous subject, insisting that he “never said a word” and just drove, “that’s all I did.” He begs Jackie to go out for a drive.
Boner’s cryptic rants, while ultimately quite vague, seem to be referring to the detectives. If this is the case, then Bob Lang’s theory—that the detectives used Boner to transport or sell their drugs and then broke his legs as a warning or punishment for some transgression that he may or may not have actually committed, as he fervently denies it—was correct.
Themes
A week after her visit, Jackie learns Boner has died of a heart attack. Only she, a nurse, and the same four detectives from Angelus attend his cremation. Afterwards, the tall redheaded detective offers his condolences, telling Jackie she was Boner’s only friend. She angrily responds that he did not have any friends because the detectives made sure of that and calls him a “bastard.” The detective answers that he is retired now. Jackie drives down to the wharf, listening on the radio to the news of the royal commission on the police. She reflects on her life, paranoid, thinking about how she failed Boner, how she let the police use her against him. She wonders if despite all she has done, she has failed to outgrow the smalltown girl and daughter of detached, disaffected parents that she once was and thought she had moved past.
Jackie, realizing the meaning behind Boner’s rambling, understands its implication: that the detective used her, too, without her knowing it. While Jackie’s exact role in the operation remains unclear, one potential explanation is that the detectives traumatized Boner until he was driven insane, and then they used Jackie to convince him to be institutionalized as pass his case off as having nothing to do with their corrupt schemes. Regardless, the detectives seem to have gotten away with their scheme, retiring after successful careers and avoiding being mentioned in the royal commission. For Jackie this is a personal crisis, too, as the forced reevaluation of her past also forces her to confront the loose threads of life that she successfully convinced herself had already long been neatly tied up.
Themes
