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Dirt Music

Winton, Tim. Book - 2001 Fiction 1 On Shelf No requests on this item Community Rating: 4 out of 5

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Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Descriptive, but not in a moving way. submitted by terpsichore17 on July 30, 2023, 11:43pm As I started reading, I thought it might be a mystery; alas, no. Toward the end, it becomes something of a My Side of the Mountain survival tale, which is much more compelling than the rest.

Briefly, this is the story of (1) an ex-nurse in Australia, Georgie Jutland, who has gone from Australia to Saudi Arabia to America and back; whose family is really into appearances/shopping (she isn’t, hence near-estrangement with them all); who has lived with a widower and his two sons for about 3 years but is feeling the itch to move on;

(2) said widower, Jim Buckridge, a fisherman who sells his catch to restaurants in Japan etc.; who gets a mean streak from his father (whose wife committed suicide); whose family had rather more money and thus also more local power; whose wife (years before she died of breast cancer) gave birth to his firstborn as he was cheating on her, such that he believes he must pay some kind of penance; and

(3) the shamoteur and musician Luther Fox, whose family has always had rotten luck; who makes his living by stealing from bigger fishermen’s traps; whose father died of mesothelioma from an asbestos mine and whose mother was killed by a typhoon; whose brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece died in a rollover accident; whose dog got shot after he and Georgie have an affair (not, NB, by Jim, but by a nationalist neighbor who wants to uphold...the local legend’s reputation? apparently); who had lost his love for music after his brother’s family died, and starts to rediscover it after meeting Georgie; who hitchhikes around the country to find an island Georgie had described to him, that he might live off the land and sea there all alone.

I’ll give him this: Winton has a gift for description. If this were rated solely on how well he conveys Australian scenery and various forms of discomfort (the knowledge that it's all over with the three-year live-in affair; various kinds of shame for various trespasses; the tightness of sunburn at one's mother's funeral; how rollover accidents leave a body; how reconnecting to music after years of grief feels), it'd be 5s all around.

The thing is, I don’t buy it, emotionally speaking - not the parts that matter most. I can almost give credence to Lu’s rediscovery of notes when he’s surviving in the wilderness alone, I can almost see the fits and starts of Jim’s resentments and frustration, I can almost believe Georgie *ends up* infatuated with this man who lives vividly in the moment. Winton writes 400 pages so you can *nearly* believe where it ends up. But the whole thread of them having an affair to start with, the whole thing that kicks it all off? Not in the least.

Also, the Aussie slang got a bit beyond me at times. Ute = SUV, polaroids = sunglasses, chookyard = a chicken run, billabong = an oxbow lake, lairizing = showing off. Not that I resent looking things up, but I wonder how differently it reads to different people.

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PUBLISHED
New York : Scribner, 2001.
Year Published: 2001
Description: 401 p.
Language: English
Format: Book

ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780743228480

SUBJECTS
Alienation (Social psychology) -- Fiction.
Middle aged women -- Fiction.
Hitchhiking -- Fiction.
Fishers -- Fiction.
Western Australia -- Fiction.