Book & Bookgroup: Dirt Music

Someone else's view who is the same as mine:

Dirt Music is a wild ride - a story of love, death, the mess people make of their lives, and their redemption through love. It is essentially the love story of Georgie Jutland and Luther Fox: Georgie, on the verge of alcoholism and finding herself in an unsure relationship with a widower named Jim and his two boys; Lu, the survivor of a world of death (everyone he loved has died in ghastly, gory ways) terrified of the thought that he is cursed, that anyone he loves will meet a horrible fate. The other characters are just as dodgy but only Jim (who, in his desire for his own redemption, seeks to help Georgie discover herself, even at the cost of their relationship) is drawn with any of the detail with which Georgie and Lu are delineated. These rough characters exist in a rough landscape: Western Australia, somewhere north of Perth, in a fishing town where most of the locals (who are literally White Pointers) have become rich from harvesting lobster but still maintain their frontier ways, often solving disputes with shotguns. Georgie is a blow-in, unsure of how she ended up living in this wild west town; Lu is a local but he's an outcast in a town of outcasts. He plays the dobro but, after the grim fate of his music-playing family, he is afraid of the psychic pain returning to music might give him so he makes a living poaching fish and crustaceans from his fellow townsfolk - a dangerous game in this unforgiving place. Through this landscape, and the even harsher landscape of the Kimberley, the love story (it would be too banal to call it a romance) of these two is played out. The novel is a genuine page-turner and a quick read, partly because of the effortless prose and partly because we can't wait to see what happens next - in that sense it's full of suspense as well, almost like a thriller/mystery. The dialogue is both sharp and blunt at the same time and only occasionally strays into unbelievability. The novel's climax is in the extreme northern country, where Lu escapes after he is nearly killed by redneck White Pointers. Georgie and Jim follow and try to find this lone, dazed, half-mad figure hiding in the wilderness.

I just loved it. Winton's language is sublime, no wonder it won the Miles Franklin.