along with his face out, his limbs butted and glanced by slick bodies, one insistent at his hip knocking again and again in bunting enquiry as he goes on like a metronome, a beat without a melody”. Lu’s paragraphs on a Coronaton Island beach where he notices the crunch of shell, a blind man experiencing the world through other senses, taking in the sound of his feet, his breathing, the slop of his waterbag. Georgie’s chapters are written in full sentences. However the last chapter combines the two disparate writing styles, so that it is written in both third and first, a kind of linguistic union, which is very powerful, and extremely well handled. While Winton is breaking out of the standard creative writing mould of sticking to a single tense; a single narrative voice; a single style; he does it so subtly, and masterfully, that the reader who is being propelled forward on the rapid narrative could easily miss it. These poetic sentences are among the strongest in the book, full of nuance, and sensual experience: “She felt herself come unglued, felt the grip of his hands upon her arms. She was floating into that pale blue screen, into the soft world outside. Georgie Jutland drank his hot shout and let him sim her up into the rest of her life.” In between the broody internal language of the two main characters is enough local dialogue to keep the story colourful, and provide a sense of external reality: “Went to the university and what-all. Jerra! He yelled into the phone. Oy, you lazy, fat hippy bastard, get ya missus down the ambo shed and tell her to put her teeth in!”
Dirt Music is a big sprawling novel about the ancient Australian land, about loss, life, death, and redemption, about change and stagnation, but above all about love, and its power to change people. Peopled with small, recognisable, and believable characters, and deep, intense themes, the prose is poetic, and powerful, and at times, the structure experimental, but it is possible to read this book solely for the plot. Fast, engaging, and stunningly beautiful, Dirt Music is the kind of book that can, and should be read, and re-read.
The copyright of the article A Review of Tim Winton's Dirt Music in Australian Literature is owned by Maggie Ball. Permission to republish A Review of Tim Winton's Dirt Music in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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