Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful read
Review: Having never read anything by Tim Winton prior to picking up this book two weeks ago, I had no expectations whatsoever. However, from the first page I was drawn into his tale and suffered several near sleepless nights as a result of not being able to put the book down. The characters, location and plot are all highly believable AND interesting. His descriptions of the landscape just made me want to go back to Western Aus and explore more vigorously. Having lived and worked for a short time in the gold mining industry in that state, I can assure the reader that Mr. Winton captures the essence of this land and it's people. It is a truely great book and I will be reading all of his other works.
Rating: 
Summary: A compulisve tale
Review: I enjoyed this book driving from Darwin to Alice Springs in Outback Australia but feel I could have been sat in a Manhatten sky scraper and still been sucked in by its atmosphere. Tim Winton delivers yet anohter compulsive read with slightly off-centre charachters you come to feel very close to. When the last CD finished I actually pulled off the highway to look for more as I could not bear it to be over! Highly reccomended for anyone on the road and anyone with a big heart for a big tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, not great
Review: I found this an enjoyable read. The subject matter interested me - dealing with grief and mid-life relationship crisis. I liked the setting and felt he evoked the landscape superbly. He also captured small town, insular Australia exceptionally well in the few characters drawn from the locale. Georgie's role as an outsider in her wealthy family rang true. Actually the sum of the parts rang more true for me than when it was put together. The idea of the grand passion coming at a time when she was adrift emotionally was good. The hurt of the young boys which isolated her within the domestic setting was achingly poignant. Small town politics and the dynamics of Jim's place in a power structure was interesting and not something I can recall having read much of in the past, especially with respect to my own culture (Australian). However, I found the last part of the book troublesome, and I think it disintegrated once the action moved to the remote island. I found it unbelievable and a bit of a Survivor / Boys Own Adventure stretch of the imagination. Winton is a fluid writer - I didn't find the prose clumsy, cliched or contrived, I didn't cringe at all as I all too often find myself doing these days. I reckon there's a great book inside here wanting to get out. I read that Winton was ages behind on deadline for delivery of this, and seemed to be blocked. I read he had a whole different book written, which he scrapped and then wrote this almost in one go. I think it shows. I am going to seek out some more of Winton's work, because I think he's a skilled writer, exploring some themes I find interesting, and his settings wonderful, and I have read better Winton books than this - Cloudsteet, and children's books The Deep and The Bugalugs Bum Thief .
Rating: 
Summary: Good style, good descriptions, lovely poetry, but...
Review: I had to struggle through the last half of the book. Tim Winton is undoubtedly a good writer, I have to admit and that's why I gave his novel two stars. It also took him seven years to write this, so you have to acknowledge the work he put into it.
The author is well-read (and doesn't hide it),knows a lot about music and knows the Australian wilderness like no other. But in my opinion the main problem with this novel is that the plot is boring and devoid of surprises (except at the end, but I won't comment on that). The characters are a bit artificial, especially the nurse (I am a nurse too and can't identify at all with the way she's haunted by a former patient...). There's a lot that doesn't seem right in this book. There seems to be no logic in the characters' actions or feelings. I'm sorry I didn't like it; maybe I just didn't understand it... Maybe you have to be in a dark, cold, rainy place to appreciate it and dream about a holiday in Australia.
Rating:
Summary: Dirt Music - the authentic sound of Australia today?
Review: I have just finished the book, and will have to read it again, it's given me a lot to think about. Other reviewers have commented on the WA landscape, and the dryness of the prose - I agree. Winton packs a lot of meaning into a few words, echoing the laconic, understated Australian idiom, where this is a real art form. It is a pleasure to read, and also a pleasure to recognise, with shock, the truth of what is said. There's something that really gets you on every page. Of the plot? This is a Pilgrim's Progress for Luther (Lu) and Georgie - reminded me a bit of Randolph Stow's "To The Islands", although it goes further, to set the story in real time and real places. Like Winton's last book, "The Riders", the vision and journey are difficult and dark, but in the end some characters do find peace, and their journey makes a deeply rewarding read. What of the characters? People we could take for granted as authentic Australians, but Winton makes us question them a bit. The rock lobster fisherman who pays fortunes for his fishing licence - and thinks he's bought entitlement to all of the sea and all in it around White Point. The white supremacist - but dying in a car crash, her last words being not to repent, but to justify her actions (that scene me yell out in shock and slam the book shut - but Winton's got them absolutely right). A sharp comment on all who wrap themselves in the Flag, to justify atrocities. Lu's brother and his wife, who Lu thinks the world of and living in a rural idyll - later seen as lazy, risking their childrens' well-being for a bit of fun and excitement. The White Point lady who knows a bit of massage, and puts Georgie's back to rights - she says that the only things she learned that were worth knowning, she learned while she was supposed to be doing something else. The SADs on their trip round WA. Wittenoom. Georgie's family in Perth - the QC father whose fondness extends to buying gifts - but he gives them to you like someone serving a writ. This may sound heavy going, but the characters are real, believable, people you think you've almost met. That is what makes the book so great. And so thought-provoking. There are also two Aboriginal guides - Menzies and Axle. Don't miss the clue about navels, telling us they're spirits, not real people. They help Fox in the North of WA, on his way to Coronation Gulf. In the end a few characters find a sort of peace - those who have looked at their pasts and put them to one side, because their pasts scare them so much. But it's a long, arduous journey, and they almost don't make it. This makes the book sound like hard work, but it's a deeply rewarding read, with a lot to say for contemporary Australians. Much of which has probably often been thought before, but seldom been actually said, and said so clearly. It's one of the best I've read this year. I'm hanging out for more, and if I heard that Tim Winton had written a bus ticket, I'd go out and buy it, just for the read.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book - worth persisting with
Review: I picked up this book with great expectiations, having recently devoured Cloud Street, The Riders, Shallows, Scission and an Open Swimmer I was looking forward to more from my favourite writer.
After the first couple of chapters I was struggling to like it, wonedring where he was going and why he was painting such poor characters and situations (I really don't like the way some authors potray the internet). It seemed a bit close to Shallows as well for.
But then the story griped me. Being a West Aussie myself and having lived in most of the areas this book picked up on I could really identify with the landscapes and people as their characters developed.
The story to me was one of how people lived their lives dealing with deaths and how letting go and realising that dead people are not more than they were and shouldn't be built up into images that restrict you living your life.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing, spare and lyrical story
Review: I was amazed at this book, written in such spare prose, so few adjectives.... yet, the characters came alive as I read. In some ways, this was a bit like Hemingway, yet Winton has a voice all his own, Australian, yet universal. I loved the way the inner life of the characters unfolded, revealing so much through action and reaction. And the environment, the mis en place of Western Australia, added to the sense of place and time these characters lived in, as they struggled to find their place in the world, and with one another. Luthor is one of the most original characters I've met in a book. He was a revelation. His self imposed trials, endured in the wilderness, at first so meaningless, becomes profound as the experience unfolds for us to share. Georgie is a woman as lost to her needs, as Luthor is lost in the tropical jungles. No sense of herself, no grasp on what she really wants, her quest to find Luthor is really a quest to find herself. I just loved this book. I felt I was discovering a fresh and exciting talent during my reading, and only later discovered the wonderful body of work Winton has already produced. He's young, he's talented and this book simply haunts me.
Rating:
Summary: Love Triangle in Western Australia
Review: I wonder why people who did not like this book gave it three stars anyway? Ooh, ooh, I know! It is a wonderful book with believable characters and a beautiful setting! That's why! We meet Georgie surfing the net at 4 am; she does not even try to hide from her husband (who is a lobsterman and arises every morning at 4 for work) that she has spent another sleepless night drinking in front of the computer. Jim does not bother to ask Georgie why she does this every night and the stage is set: a loveless, amicable marriage with the wife searching for her future and the husband hiding from his past. Add another man attempting to eke out a living after a horrible loss (he explains the odd title for us) and sit back and enjoy the ride. Western Australia comes to life with Winton's beautiful prose, and I spent a sleepless night reading on my couch to discover what happened to these three lost souls at the end of this gripping novel. I look forward to reading other works by Mr. Winton!
Rating:
Summary: Music for the land
Review: If Cloudstreet could be considered as a contender for the'Great Australian Novel' then Dirt Music is something more. Yet it is no less a novel that explores where we as Australians feel at home. Winton creates yet another beautiful male character in Luther Fox, whose attachment to the earth is multifaceted. He hears its resonances in the dirt music he plays and in the ocean where he is comfortable and then most powerfully in his journey north through Western Australia.
This novel is a love story that tests boundaries. Georgie, the female protagonist inspires many emotions in us, but we are admire her determination in following Luther and 'saving' him.
Underscoring this is winton's magical evoction of place and the rhythyms of the land. Most interestingly of all you can buy the double CD that acts as a soundtrack that underscores the necessity of music in our lives. We are lucky when we get a double dose - Winton's words with the music he believes best reflects what he is saying. Beautiful!
Rating:
Summary: Great book from a brilliant writer
Review: Like all great writers Tim Winton can make the very ordinary seem extraordinary. The storyline of this novel revolves around three characters. Each is dissatisfied with their lives for different reasons. Georgie is bored and losing interest in her current partner Jim, a successful fisherman who is still nursing the emotional scars caused by the death of his wife. Lu Fox is in an eternal struggle with seemingly everyone as the town loner and illegal fisherman. The triangle is formed when Lu helps a stranded Georgie whose car has broken down in the vast plains outside their town in WA. Their fling is very brief as Lu is run out of town for his covert raids on the town's important fishing waters.
The impression Georgie and Lu make on each other ensures that their thoughts bring them closer despite Lu's attempts at physical isolation in the remote top end of Australia.
Winton creates interesting characters, constantly struggling with their past as well as each other. He also has a special talent at somehow incorporating the natural environment of Western Australia into the lives of the novel's characters, the land is as alive and furtive as they are, as harsh and unforgiving as it is beautiful and vast, it is real frontier country and as such the characters endure and are molded by its extremities in their quest to find each other and their lost selves. You don't so much read about this countryside as smell, taste and become immersed in it along with the three protagonists.
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