Dirt Music

Bleak story of bleak characters in a bleak world that seemed very honest. Recommended.

Continuing with my new hobby of reading the books behind the movies Kelly Macdonald has starred in, I finally arrived at Dirt Music and savored every. single. page. Tell me a book has emotionally damaged characters and there's no need to say more. I'm in.

Though the synopsis centers on the tragic life of Lu Fox, the book is predominantly focused on Georgie Jutland, a woman stuck in an affectionless relationship bound by secrets, hidden pasts, and in general things left unsaid. She's drawn to Lu from the start, watching him from afar as he poaches in her fisherman boyfriend Jim's waters. When they finally meet, she throws herself into an impulsive affair.

Alas, in a small town, there are some secrets that can't be kept for long. When Jim gets an inkling of Georgie and Lu's relationship, Lu takes off knowing better than to tangle with Buckridge. Georgie, too, feels like she needs to run but continues to feel stuck.

This is a slow, long-winded, description-heavy book. The first chapter alone takes up about a fourth of the book. There's a lot of nothing going on (most of the time) in terms of action on the page. I don't normally enjoy this pace, but there was something about the characters that drew me in. I didn't care much for Georgie at first and she ended up being the one I cared most about. As for her romance with Lu, I didn't care what happened with it despite it being a key element of the book.

While the book spent a long time on the mundane moments, there was also an abundance of information and characters coming and going. I couldn't follow or retain a lot of the names and connections despite having taken my time to read and process small sections at a time. My lasting impression is a strange one. Some moments in the book left me perplexed not only wondering if particular moments were necessary to the story. Some of the characters' actions were also unusual. So while I enjoyed the reading experience immensely, I feel as though I've only retained the essence rather than the plot itself.

“Dirt music," Fox tells Georgie, "is anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity.”

...and it is from this short conversation that the book takes its title.

Set in small town Western Australia - a fictional town, called White Point, where the industry is fishing, and the people are hard working rural folk - this is a gritty novel. The people of white Point are called White Pointers - obvious but clever, in a fishing town. The machinations of small town Australia, a patriarchal family, who hold the imbalance of power for no reason other than they own a lot of the land and are successful and wealthy. Jim Buckridge, inheriting that power from his father, and now the others look up to him, look to him for guidance and to take the lead. But it is Georgie, his girlfriend, who is the enigmatic lead character - seemingly so unsure of her own motivations, and similarly unsure how disconnected from her family she is. That is, Georgie and Luther Fox, the poacher - both enigmatic and complicated.

The blurb gives a good rundown of the plot, better than I would explain.

The characters are damaged. The characters have past history they are reluctant to share, history that effects their thinking and their actions, and that effect their relationships. These characters, like real people are complicated. They are each looking for redemption.

However it is in the setting of the scene, in describing this small town, the sea, the scenery where Winton spends much of his time, and when the story moves north to a new setting, he does the same. It is with great depth he describes things - often to the detriment of the storyline, but it is enticing nevertheless.

It is an interesting part of Australia, the West. I spent some time there, living in Perth briefly, looking for work, at a time it was hard to come by. In the end I took a job on a remote cattle station, four months of isolation with ‘interesting characters', but not necessarily people you would choose to spend that time with. I didn't make my way to a coastal fishing town, or to a remote north-western coastline, which was the second setting of this novel. I would love to have found a way to the second, much more than the first.

I ripped through this novel, reading it in a day and a half. Partly because I have a slight cold, and was not welcome in the office in this time of covid panic (not that we have the virus loose in NZ, only in our returning citizens, who go into isolation), but partly due to its appeal. I did find it hard to put down, and for me it was 4 stars worth. Tim Winton is not an author I am familiar with, so I was luck to have been gifted a copy.

4**