Rating: 
Summary: Beware the writing style
Review: Once you get over Winton's different writing style you find a story of human relationships interwoven with suspense and sadness. Whilst I enjoyed the book and felt it ran with peaks and troughs I found the writing style a little hard to come to terms with. It is an excellently written book but it is unlikely I will read another of his books.
Rating: 
Summary: An Australian Masterwork
Review: STEP MOTHER! The words spit from a nine-year-old and affect Georgia Jutland like a blow from a stingray. She can only turn away in tears. She lives in an uneasy relationship with the widowed Jim Buckridge and his two young sons. A strong leader, Georgia`s husband cornered the lucrative local lobster trade, and became rich. Jim is protective of his business, especially against interlopers to whom mysterious accidents happen. He works hard not to become like his sadistic father, and fear of this happening haunts him. We are in rugged Western Australia, where a frontier style of life prevails. This puts Georgia in triple danger when she throws herself into a clandestine affair with an outcast Luke Fox, (known as Lu.) Neither has achieved anything close to self-actualization by age 40, and, worse, unable to conclude what it is they want out of life, and their affair, their pasts burden them like credit card debt. Georgia is a tomboy who leaves home when she finds her father uses her as a display of his own success. Lu is a poacher, and therefore in danger from the fishing community. He is also a musician who tries to run away from his music because of a family tragedy. They come together, and part, like moon-influenced ocean currents. Tim Winton`s skills show in both plotting and writing; this is not recycled Rhett Butler and Scarlett O`Hara, Heathcliff and Catherine, or the old Bette Davis videos, that Jim and Georgie watch, so we do not know where Jim, Luke and Georgie will wind up, in fact we will not find out until we reach the last word on page 407 of the book`s 407 pages!
Clever!
Rating:
Summary: Fiction at it's Finest, Flawless
Review: The fictional fishing port of West Point is about five hours by car north of Perth on the Indian Coast in Western Australia. Jim Buckridge is a big shot in town and the best fisherman on the coast. Luther Fox is from a family of outcast musicians who were killed in an auto accident and now Luther works as a "shamateur" or poacher of heavily policed fishing grounds. Georgina "Georgie" Jutland is the daughter of a wealthy, yacht-owning barrister from Perth. She had been off traveling the world when she decided to help crew a yacht that had been wrecked in Indonesia, where she had up with Jim Buckridge. After a few years living with Jim in White Point, Georgie begins to feels as if she's stuck in a rut, like she's a fishwife and it doesn't help any when one of Jim's children refers to her as his stepmum. She starts drinking and spending too much time surfing the net. She also takes to wandering the beach after dark. It's on one of these sleepless night strolls that she spies Jim poaching. She admires his nerve and they start a reckless affair. However it's not long before they're discovered and Luther's illegal poaching activities are brutally stopped when White Pointers wreck his boat, kill his dog and set fire to his house. He barely escapes drowning and travels north to Coronation Island, where he becomes sort of a New Age musical beachcomber. Jim and Georgie follow Luther and search him out in his isolated island hideaway, but is Jim seeking revenge or offering forgiveness? And what exactly is Georgie looking for? The three main characters in this impossible to put down novel are very likable, even though they are flawed, however it's the tremendous and bizarre minor characters that people Mr. Winton's pages that really set this book apart. There's the redneck Lotus-land Broom; Rusty, the drug crazed amputee ; Horrie and Bess, an elderly couple on their last campervan adventure; Beaver who is an ex-gang member with a Vietnamese bride everybody calls "Mail-order" and a host of others. And add to that the tremendous landscape of Western Australia and couple it with Mr. Winton's flawless prose and you have a book that's worth every one of those five stars that I'm giving it here. Sophie Cacique Gaul
Rating:
Summary: For me - not as good.
Review: The only problem with writing a superlative book, is that the following ones are, by definition, not as good. This is a great book - but - I loved 'Cloud Street', and had hoped for equal pleasure.
'Cloud Street' is unique,classic; but, somehow, 'Dirt Music' kept reminding me of Keri Hulme's 'The Bone People'. Both authors write superbly of a loved land; strong flawed protagonists, and have a logic-defying ending, but...I won't return to 'Dirt Music' as I do to 'the Bone People', and to 'Cloud Street'.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, maybe, but Fatally Flawed... November 24, 2003
Review: There is a major error in this book which disturbs me greatly when I think that this book was even nominated for the Booker Prize. Jim Buckridge is 48 years old. The book clearly states this fact. Lu Fox happens to be 35 which is utterly impossible in terms of the storyline. Fox remembers Jim Buckridge at White Point Jetty when Jim was 11? How? I know this is a fictional piece, however, that is a leap of faith I can't take where Winton is concerned. If we were dealing with Sci-Fi maybe I could forgive him.
Winton constantly states that Fox can't believe that "she is real" - refering to Georgie. It is even the last sentence in the book which seems to be a feeble attempt to tie everything together. It simply doesn't work because Fox himself cannot exist in this story. "He's not real."
Rating:
Summary: A refreshing love story
Review: This book deals with many issues: life in a small Australian fishing town, the mourning process of losing close family members, the feeling of being "direction-less" in life and the risks we need to take to find happiness and love. In an unconventional and refreshing way, the author takes two wounded and lost souls and, against all odds, draws their lives together for better or worse. What an unlikely satisfying experience was to read this book. It is moving and avoids all the cliches and blandness of a traditional love story.
Rating:
Summary: Gritty, harsh, but a supurb writing.
Review: This book is about a romance, but it is far from being a light, fluffy, summer vacation read. Winton tears the characters apart and lets us really see them warts and all. The characters aren't particularly noble, or even just plain "good" they are just like us and that's what makes it such a good read. Like Winton's other books, the ending left me a bit puzzled but the writing is so forceful and well crafted that I savoured every sentence. Not for the Mills and Boon crowd. Mark
Rating:
Summary: a good read
Review: This book is about grief and regrets in life and the complicated ways they affect people. Admittedly, the path this book takes is an odd one but that's part of its appeal. I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of Western Australia where the story takes place and there are some delicious bits of writing here. Not to mention, I learned a whole new set of Australian vocabulary!
Rating: 
Summary: Author Assumptions
Review: This book is captivation personified once you get into this author's particular style. The flow of words is a little too "stream of consciousness" and the author assumes that the reader will have some knowledge of common australian slang. Still, an emotionally riveting plotline, very much a romantic drama.
Rating:
Summary: Inane
Review: this is one of the most boring pieces of garbage i have ever read. just what i get for buying it because the cover caught my eye. after page 50, i was dead asleep.
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