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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780743228480 |
Awards
Shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2002 Miles Franklin Award (Australia)
Powells.com Staff Pick
What propels this work is the intensity of Winton's very poetic style. A plot like this with these characters would typically make me tear my hair out with irritation. Under Winton's paternal guidance (not unlike Thomas Hardy's) I was consistently riveted and seductively drawn along. A wonderful read! Mark Ingraham, Powells.com
Undoubtedly one of the best novels published over the last several years, Dirt Music takes place in the wilds of Australia's West Coast. It follows the adventures (and misadventures) of a young poacher as he runs afoul of his village's headman, and is forced to flee, eventually finding himself in the great Australian wilderness area on the continent's Northwest coast. This is truly a great novel, filled with engaging characters, and an encyclopedic and dazzling array of allusions to music and literature going back several hundred years.
Recommended by Chris Faatz, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
From Powells.com:
Publisher Comments:
One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each other no matter how dangerous it is — and out on White Point it is very dangerous.
Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature.
Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion — and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.
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Synopsis:
Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music tells the story of Luther Fox, a broken man who makes his living as an illegal fisherman — a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, Fox grew melons and counted stars and loved playing his guitar. Now, his life has become a "project of forgetting." Not until he meets Georgie Jutland, the wife of White Point's most prosperous fisherman, does Fox begin to dream again and hear the dirt music — "anything you can play on a verandah or porch," he tells Georgie, "without electricity." Like the beat of a barren heart, nature is never silent. Ambitious and perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense, emotion, and timeless truths.
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About the Author
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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
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Chris Johnson, June 4, 2008 (view all comments by Chris Johnson)
Australia is blessed with many, many great fiction writers, and Tim Winton is one of the very best. Dirt Music is a great example of a novel that can be read at whatever level the reader likes - a good story, yes, but also a love letter from the author to the landscape of Western Australia, and a meditation on loss and recovery. Without giving anything away, the ending of the novel was absolutely, breathtakingly right. When I closed the book, I could feel my heart beating.
"Dirt Music" is described in the novel as music played for the joy of it, on the porch with friends. If you go to Australia, look in stores for a 2-CD compilation on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Records, also called "Dirt Music," that includes music referred to in the novel and inspired by it.
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julieb43, February 18, 2008 (view all comments by julieb43)
Never having been to Australia and unfamiliar with much of the slang used in the novel, I nevertheless was completely captivated by the wonderful descriptions of the rugged Australian landscape, as well as the quirky characteristics of the principal characters.
Luther Fox came off the most sympathetic due to everything he'd endured in his past and was still enduring. His drive and (stubborn) determination to free himself of his demons was heartwrenching.
Georgie Jutland, the woman who he becomes obsessed with, is also trying to elude her demons. They make an unusual pair in that Georgie is still tied to her partner (a tough fisherman and sworn enemy of the Fox family) and initially cannot decide what move to make.
The writing is lyrical with crisp dialogue, and the plot moves along, dividing its chapters between Georgie and Luthor and their quests for individuality.
A real page-turner.
View all 2 comments
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780743228480
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Scribner Book Company
- Location:
- New York
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Literary
- Subject:
- Psychological fiction
- Subject:
- Middle aged women
- Subject:
- Fishers
- Subject:
- Love stories
- Subject:
- Hitchhiking
- Subject:
- Western Australia
- Subject:
- Alienation
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Edition Description:
- Trade paper
- Series Volume:
- no. 530
- Publication Date:
- May 2003
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 416
- Dimensions:
- 8.02x5.26x.91 in. .76 lbs.
