Dirt Music by Tim Winton

ISBN: 0743228480
416 pages
published in 2001.

There is really no way to describe how much I enjoyed this book. Reading the back synopsis in Barnes & Noble intrigued me, but I wasn’t really sure how I’d take to it as it isn’t really my normal style. I was so impressed. The story really wraps you in and keeps you going. I wound up reading it slowly so for a while it was just this really interesting, lovely thing I could return to whenever I wanted it. So I’m a bit sad it’s over.

The story centers around Georgie Jutland, her husband, Jim Buckridge – the most prosperous fisherman in the town they live in – and Luther Fox, an outcast that lives just outside of town that has been making his living by fishing illegally. Faced with dead-end marriage with someone she finds she barely knows, Georgie starts seeing Lu secretly. With her background as a nurse and an ongoing need to take care of others that George herself describes as the failing point of all of her relationships, she begins uncovering a bit of what has caused Lu to retreat to the life he is currently living in a way that Jim had never bothered to. He begins to describe a life of music with his siblings and family, a life of caring for a melon farm, something comfortable despite being strained and despite the fact that his family had never had “good luck” and was always rejected by the rest of the people in town. At least before a terrible accident that his entire family.

However, when the people in the town find out about Lu’s activities and destroy his car and kill his dog, Lu decides to take off across Western Australia to try and find a place where he cannot be tracked down. He’s sure that Jim is after him and hides out far in the bush to escape him. Meanwhile, Georgie agonizes over her failed relationship with Jim and the life she might have been able to lead with Lu. Jim seems to want to make amends for his past, which was anything but kind, and convinces Georgie to take off and find Lu, wherever he may be.

Winton is one of the best writers I’ve ever encountered. The story is compelling and it’s very easy to find yourself attached to his characters, even the ones you are not quite sure you like. I’ll be reading Cloudstreet next, and I’m excited to see how his writing style works in other stories. He really is wonderful at description, which was especially important for a story like this that relies so heavily upon the Western Australian landscape. There are descriptions of plants and animals and land everywhere in the book.

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1. [...] literature. I’ve read books by Winton before — you can check out my review of Dirt Music — for one, I feel like the writing was not as mature — but the story was still [...]

   

   In The Winter Dark by Tim Winton at

   15 Feb 10 at 5:31 pm

    

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