Dirt Music (Hardcover)

The plot is something else altogether: an elegantly wearied, cleverly finessed mutual odyssey, that opts to follow the sometimes intertwining, sometimes diverging lives of poor Georgie and Luther, as they try to deal with the odd alliance they comprise, as well as the complex and fractured lives they want to leave behind. The way Georgie deals with her unwitting inheritance of two dissatisfied adopted kids is particularly touching, poignant, and well written.

Best of all, though, is the prose. Somehow it manages to be simultaneously juicy and dry, like a desert cactus. This is especially true when Winton touches on the scented harshness of the Down Under outback: "the music is jagged and pushy and he for one just doesn’t want to bloody hear it, but the outbursts of strings and piano are as austere and unconsoling as the pindan plain out there with its spindly acacia and red soil". This is a wise and accomplished novel. --Sean Thomas

Review
Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a captivating love story of grief, regret and lost dreams, from the author of the Booker short-listed The Riders.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel The Riders in 1995, Tim Winton is one of the best Australian writers around. Every word is made to count in his fiercely poetic prose - you can see the big Western Australian skies, taste the tang of the salt bush and feel the dry red heat of the outback in every sentence of this wonderful, brutal book. Georgie Jutland is a woman whose life is in a mess. Aged 40, still beautiful despite the sun lines around her eyes, she has quit nursing - itself the career she chose when she abandoned the idea of becoming a doctor - to become unwanted stepmother to two difficult boys, and the common-law wife of wealthy fisherman Jim Buckridge. The Buckridge family is the aristocracy of the rough town of White Point, where licences to fish for lobster and oysters are licences to print money - and jealously guarded. After Georgie's vodka-fuelled late-night Internet-surfing binges are interrupted by the shadow of a poacher's pick-up truck in the distance, her innocuous secret outings to swim with his dog initially go unnoticed. But when she meets the 'shamateur' himself, hillbilly musician Luther Fox, she finds herself sliding inexorably into the mire of a violent small-town rivalry she can only begin to understand. The vivid cast of supporting characters begin to close ranks against the stranger, and Georgie's emotional life becomes even more complicated when her mother dies suddenly. Jim and Luther circle each other from a distance, as wary as wild animals, but when Luther takes off, running from the demons of his past as much as from Georgie, Jim's reaction is unpredictable, and Georgie realizes how much the two men have in common. A dangerous trail takes Georgie, Jim and Luther to the outside limits of the glorious, sprawling country Winton obviously loves so much - and to the limits of human endurance. Unmissable. (Kirkus UK)

See all Product Description