Dirt Music

Paperback, 416 pages

Published 2002

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.

As a reader, what I love about Winton's books are his characters. Flawed, complex, and very human, they make the story for me in all of his books. Listening to an audio version of Dirt Music, I found myself focusing on the dialogue, which is plain and circumspect. As a result, it took a lot longer for me to engage with the book when listening than it ever has when reading. In the end, however, the audio version was incredibly powerful. When you're riding on a suburban train on a dark Melbourne autumn night, the evocation of Winton's hot, dry, windy Western Australiaas told through Suzi Dougherty's incredible narrationis so powerful. I found myself slitting my eyes against the sun in the middle of the night and waiting until the last possible minute to switch the iPod off and stop the book, just so I could snatch an extra few seconds of the story. Twelve hours seemed a huge time commitment in the beginning, but once I engaged with the narrative, the book just flew. Dougherty's Georgie Jutland is perfectly voiced and her narration captures the other, very Australian, characters beautifully. Dirt Music would make a fantastic accompaniment to a driving holiday. 4 stars. --AudioFile Magazine

Booker Prize Nominee (2002)