Arguably one of the finest of all Australian novelists, Tim Winton shows that he remains on top mid-season form with Dirt Music, a wistful, charged, ardent novel of female loss and amatory redemption.
The setting is Winton’s favourite: the thorn-bushed, sheep-farmed, sun-punished boondocks of Western Australia.
The cast is limited but spirited: the two chief protagonists are a fortysomething adoptive mother with a vodka problem called Georgie Jutland, and a brooding, feral, bushwhacking poacher, Luther Fox.