Shortlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize, this is a generous, raw, captivating novel about the possibility and power of love.
Dirt Music
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'Written in seemingly effortless prose that never puts a foot wrong' Sunday Times
Book Description
‘Generous, earthy and raw . . . Mysteries don’t come more heartfelt than this’ Independent Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded 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. One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast. So begins an unlikely alliance. Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds of breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by grief or regret, whose dreams are lost, whose hopes have dried up. It’s a journey across landscapes within and without, about the music that sometimes arises from the dust. ‘Winton keeps writing fiction that makes the novel feel alive to a continent of possibilities’ Evening Standard ‘Winton is not a great Australian novelist; he is a great novelist, full stop’ The Times
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First Sentence
ONE NIGHT in November, another that had somehow become morning while she sat there, Georgie Jutland looked up to see her pale and furious face reflected in the window. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
ONE NIGHT in November, another that had somehow become morning while she sat there, Georgie Jutland looked up to see her pale and furious face reflected in the window. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Tim Winton's books are not light and easy. His characters are the walking wounded, scarred marred and often barely surviving. He besets them with harsh tragedies, violent accidents, abandonment. Sometimes their situations are so dire that you might want to put the book aside and go into the fresh air just to know that life isn't as bleak and cruel as he paints it. When you return to the narrative, wary and battle weary the chinks of light begin to appear.
Dirt Music reduced me to tears - Fox the sole survivor of a brutal family accident, an outcast of a harsh unforgiving Australian community finds love and redemption of a sort through Georgie, a woman who is as adrift as he. The novel is surprisingly suspenseful, so I won't write any more of the actual events, but God is it good! Tim Winton stands with Janette Turner Hospital as a major talent who has sprung from the arid ground of Australia.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By jfp2006
Format:Paperback
This is a stunning novel in many unexpected ways, and for a newspaper such as the Mail on Sunday to say that it is "a book about the possibility and power of love" hardly even skims the surface of its beauty and its complexity.
With precious little knowledge of Australian literature, I confess to having approached it warily, and mainly on the recommendation of a trustworthy friend, although also on the strength of its having been shortlisted for the Booker Prize [in 2002]. Also - and this seems to happen more and more often these days - the blurb on the back of the paperback edition is slightly misleading: it introduces us to the two main characters, Georgie Jutland, "stranded with a fisherman she doesn't love", and Luther Fox. "Outcast". And "so begins an unlikely alliance".
But this is not particularly accurate, given that, for much of the novel, after an initial idyllic but thwarted episode, Georgie and Luther find themselves many hundreds of miles apart. And Tim Winton's novel slowly but inexorably turns into a fascinating thriller, as disturbing elements from the past slowly emerge, concerning the tragic history of Fox's family, and the role played in that tragedy by Jim Buckridge, Georgie's doltish, swaggering and somewhat sadistic partner.
From the fishing community of White Point in Western Australia, the reader travels northwards with Fox into an increasingly hostile and wild landscape against which he has to pit his wits constantly in order to survive. It is a journey into an Australian heart of darkness, and Fox, despite the music in his soul, is sometime hard pressed to continue making sense of what he sees as "a life writ in mud".
I think a couple of previous reviewers have maybe been slightly over-critical of the way the novel ends: slightly contrived as it is, it is far from being clichéd, and certainly not melodramatic.
And though I know one is not supposed to separate the style from the substance, a special mention for Tim Winton's highly original writing. The daring combinations of words, whether it's "a stiff coffee", "runty melons", "generic furniture", "a snarl of vines", "red dripping tomatoes" [the list is endless] come off, every single time. "Dirt Music" is a book suffused with poetry and music of the most intoxicating variety. And will have me reading more Tim Winton very soon.
With precious little knowledge of Australian literature, I confess to having approached it warily, and mainly on the recommendation of a trustworthy friend, although also on the strength of its having been shortlisted for the Booker Prize [in 2002]. Also - and this seems to happen more and more often these days - the blurb on the back of the paperback edition is slightly misleading: it introduces us to the two main characters, Georgie Jutland, "stranded with a fisherman she doesn't love", and Luther Fox. "Outcast". And "so begins an unlikely alliance".
But this is not particularly accurate, given that, for much of the novel, after an initial idyllic but thwarted episode, Georgie and Luther find themselves many hundreds of miles apart. And Tim Winton's novel slowly but inexorably turns into a fascinating thriller, as disturbing elements from the past slowly emerge, concerning the tragic history of Fox's family, and the role played in that tragedy by Jim Buckridge, Georgie's doltish, swaggering and somewhat sadistic partner.
From the fishing community of White Point in Western Australia, the reader travels northwards with Fox into an increasingly hostile and wild landscape against which he has to pit his wits constantly in order to survive. It is a journey into an Australian heart of darkness, and Fox, despite the music in his soul, is sometime hard pressed to continue making sense of what he sees as "a life writ in mud".
I think a couple of previous reviewers have maybe been slightly over-critical of the way the novel ends: slightly contrived as it is, it is far from being clichéd, and certainly not melodramatic.
And though I know one is not supposed to separate the style from the substance, a special mention for Tim Winton's highly original writing. The daring combinations of words, whether it's "a stiff coffee", "runty melons", "generic furniture", "a snarl of vines", "red dripping tomatoes" [the list is endless] come off, every single time. "Dirt Music" is a book suffused with poetry and music of the most intoxicating variety. And will have me reading more Tim Winton very soon.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am not an avid reader, nor prone to writing reviews, but this book is something special.
What makes it for me is the time and effort taken to embed the characters and the plot into the western Australian environment. In essence it is a very simple story, but the magic is in the telling; a stark story told with an eloquent richness.
I found it a real pleasure to find characters explicitly shaped by, and articulated through, the intensity of the landscape around them. It reminds me of Steinbeck in part, and conjures up expansive visual images.
I stayed up till the early hours to finish this book, and - if I have a criticism - it would be that ending comes together a little too conveniently. A minor grumble though, the journey the book takes you on is quite exceptional.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent
Yet another Tim Winton book - read this after reading Cloud Street - go on - you won't be disappointed.
Published 4 months ago by Cereda Kemp
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Writing - Possible Spoilers
I left it a few days before writing this review, to see if the haunting effect of Dirt Music had lessened any. It hasn't. Read more
Published 10 months ago by J. Mccready
5.0 out of 5 stars
one of the few books I've read twice
I first read this when we were travelling in Western Australia. We were heading north from Perth, up the coast road thru Geraldton, Carnarvon, Port Hedland and onwards up to Broome... Read more
Published 14 months ago by rosie c
3.0 out of 5 stars
Directionless
Having greatly enjoyed Breath I wanted to try anther Winton novel. I finished Dirt Music last night and what started out a joy had tuned into a chore. Read more
Published on 10 Mar 2011 by Lendrick
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dull Dirge Music
Winton seems to be desperately trying to not write with any kind of involvement. Characters lie flat on the page, scenery is black and white and emotions are kept well hidden. Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2011 by Dillon the Villain
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tim Winton^s Eggs
Tim Winton is a writer with remarkable gifts (as I knew already from Breath). Dirt Music is formidable piece of writing, which depicts the Australian landscape with a vividness I,... Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2010 by Duncan Bush
5.0 out of 5 stars
dirt music
This book is very much a tribute to Australia the environment and the unusual characters that populate the space. Read more
Published on 29 Aug 2010 by C. Woodward
5.0 out of 5 stars
poetic and gutsy
Another brilliant piece by Tim Winton. Reading some of the reviews people have shared, it strikes me that one man's meat is another man's poison. Read more
Published on 20 July 2010 by littleredrobin
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dirt Music by Tim Winton
Gives an insight into living wild in Western Australia. Characters are obsessed and persistent, but very well observed and recorded. Read more
Published on 11 Dec 2009
5.0 out of 5 stars
Australian demotic
Georgie Jutland is becalmed, like a boat without a sail, in a small, coastal fishing town in the southern Australian temperate zone. Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
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