Tom Keely's reputation is in ruins. And that's the upside. Divorced and unemployed, he's lost faith in everything precious to him. Holed up in a grim high-rise, cultivating his newfound isolation, Keely looks down at a society from which he's retired, hurt, and angry. He's done fighting the good fight, and well past caring. But even in his seedy flat, ducking the neighbours, he's not safe from entanglement. All it takes is an awkward encounter in the lobby.

Georgie Jutland is a mess. At 40, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognizes herself.

The remarkable true stories in The Boy Behind the Curtain reveal an intimate and rare view of Tim Winton's imagination at work and play. In Tim Winton's fiction, chaos waits in the wings, and ordinary people are ambushed by events and emotions beyond their control. Winton's own life has also been shaped by havoc.

Jaxie dreads going home. His mum’s dead. The old man bashes him without mercy, and he wishes he was an orphan. And then, in one terrible moment, his life is stripped to little more than what he can carry and how he can keep himself alive. There’s just one person left in the world who understands him and what he still dares to hope for. But to reach her he’ll have to cross the vast saltlands on a trek that only a dreamer or a fugitive would attempt.

Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow in his orchard. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the verandah of the Stubbses house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again.