Dirt Music

Dirt Music is a novel by Tim Winton published in 2001. Set in locations in Western Australia it is a study of three characters who have had a complicated past and are trying to readapt their lives. As with most of Tim Winton's books the setting where the action takes place is an important feature of the novel.

Georgie Jutland has been living in White Point with a local, well to do, fisherman, Jim Buckridge, whose family has a reputation in the community's past. Georgie feels that she doesn't belong until she meets a local poacher, Lu Fox, who was a local musician until his family members died in a car accident. He now lives alone keeping away from the local community.The relationship between Georgie and Lu grows with Georgie considering leaving Jim to live with Lu. Then Lu disappears up north. 

Meanwhile we learn more about the former lives of Georgie and Jim and how they deal with memories of the past. Eventually Jim decides that he and Georgie should head to northern West Australia to locate Lu who retired to a small island where he is trying to survive. 

Dirt Music is about people attempting to gain redemption from past events and deciding on possible changes that may shape their future lives and relationships.

Dirt Music was a 2002 Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel and winner of the 2002 Miles Franklin Award. It was a film in 2019.

Juice

Juice by Tim Winton is set in a future drastically altered by climate change. People can no longer live in the tropics and during the summer families in part of Western Australia (and probably other areas in Australia) need to retreat below ground in order to survive. They can live and work above ground in the winter but need to work to gather enough supplies to allow them to survive isolation during the hot season.

An unnamed narrator recounts the story of the cause of this climatic destruction to a man he meets when he and a young girl are looking for a new location where they may possibly survive. His story describes the destruction of past lifestyles to the current disaster. The narrator also tells of his life story leading to his present predicament.

Tim Winton is known for his concerns about the environment and the effects of climate change. One of his other works is a book for young teenagers, Blueback. He has also featured in a number of television programs about the environment and threats to nature. 

Juice is a long book - 513 pages - but once I became used to the writing style I wanted to keep reading. Books like Juice encourage readers to think more carefully about how our lifestyle affects the environment in which we live. Dystopian books like Juice will hopefully encourage the reader to think about how the way we currently live may affect and / or destroy life for future generations living in our country. The novel also touches on the possibility of the creation of AI people or simulations in the future.

Juice by Tim Winton - life after the apocalypse - The Guardian  

Schooled in doubleness - Australian Book Review 

Haunted by our legacy - QUT Guild

Blueback

My eleven year old grandson and I both enjoyed reading Blueback by Tim Winton recently. Tim Winton has written a number of books showing his love and respect for oceans and recently appeared in a documentary series on the ABC - Ningaloo: Australia's ocean wonder. A film has also recently been made based on the book, Blueback.

Abel and his mother live at Longboat Bay south of Perth. They both love the sea and frequently take a boat into the bay and then dive and explore the clear water. On these expeditions Abel meets a large Groper who he names Blueback and much of the book is about the relationship that develops between this fish and Abel. 

As he grows up Abel learns to love the the sea around Longboat bay and is reluctant to leave the area to attend school and later university. He becomes a marine biologist and travels the world but he eventually realises that his heart remains in Longboat Bay and its surrounding environment. The importance of respecting and maintaining the marine environment is an important theme in this book.

Geraldine Brooks on Tim Winton

Geraldine Brooks has written this book on Tim Winton in the Writers on Writers series. She provides a short, 76 page analysis of Tim Winton's writing and why she likes his books. She explains why his books have been important for her, especially when she has been working away from Australia. 

Tim Winton's books have been published since 1982. He has won the Miles Franklin award four times (Shallows 1984, Cloudstreet 1992, Dirt Music 2002 and Breath 2009) and his book The Riders was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1995. He has also written books for children.

Tim Winton's novels are normally set in Western Australia and often have something to do with water or the sea. He sets out to write stories where the plot is important but also places emphasis on characters and the environment in which the book is set. Many of the incidents in his books are based on people he has known and / or events that he has experienced. Geraldine Brooks discusses some of the aspects of Tim Winton's life that have impacted on his writing.

Perhaps Tim Winton's most famous work is Cloudstreet which was later turned into a play and a television series. I started reading the novel many years ago but became frustrated with realistic down and out characters who when life appeared to be improving for them made even more mistakes. I only got half way through the novel. I think it is time that I gave it another try. I have enjoyed a number of Tim Winton's other novels including Breath, Dirt Music, Eyrie and The Shepherd's Hut.

The Shepherd's Hut

Over the years I have read a number of Tim Winton novels and have enjoyed most of the them. However the one that I did not finish was Cloudstreet, perhaps his best known work. This was largely because the main character annoyed me so much. I will go back to the book one day and hopefully finish reading the saga. However I really enjoyed the experience of reading The Shepherd's Hut and needed to keep reading until the end to find out what happened.

In Tim Winton's novels the Australian environment plays a major role - it is not just a setting for the action, it is a major component of the book. The Shepherd's Hut is set in Western Australia, in dry, desolate semi-desert scrub country with a large salt pan being a major feature.

It is in a small country town that we first meet Jaxie, a young teenage boy who is used to being bullied and abused. His mother has died and then one evening he arrives home to find his alcoholic father dead under his car. Jaxie decides he has no choice but to leave home and sets off on foot to find his cousin, the only person who he hopes understands him.

With few belongings and little food and water Jaxie travels until he finds the remains of a shelter where he stays for a time. Venturing further he discovers an old shepherd's hut in which an old man is living. Much of the story revolves around the relationship between Jaxie and Fintan McGillis, a former Catholic priest. It is about the art of survival as well as learning to understand oneself. Jaxie has been afraid that he may become like his abusive father. He needs to gradually understand who he really is. He is also wary and unable to fully trust Fintan. He wants to leave but also, over time, feels a responsibility towards the old man.

This work has rightly been described as a brutal book. It is set in a brutal, barren landscape but it is the language in which the book is written that really hits the reader. The story is told through Jaxion's eyes and the language is earthy, direct and full of swearing and Australian slang. But this is who the characters are and the raw language contributes to the telling of the story.

It was sometimes hard work but I am glad that I read this Australian novel.

Review:
The Shepherd's Hut reviewed by Michael McGirr

Eyrie

The central character in the latest novel by Tim Winton is Tom Keely, an environmentalist who has lost his job and his wife and is living in a small apartment on the 10th floor of a building in Freemantle. Tom is down on his luck. His health is deteriorating and despite the encouragement and concern of his mother and sister he refuses to do anything about it. He has friends who ask after him but he has done his best to isolate himself from his past connections. One day he discovers that a neighbour on his floor lived in the same street as his family when they were both growing up. Gemma Buck looks after her six year old grandson, Kai, and despite his best intentions Tom reluctantly becomes involved with the lives of Gemma and Kai.

Location and environment are important in Tim Winton's novels. In Eyrie the description of the rooms where Tom and Gemma live and the surrounding streets of their part of Freemantle are described by Winton in detail as is the view of the water and the wharves from their balconies. The sea features regularly throughout the book and it is really only when swimming in the sea that Tom finds relief from the pressures of life. Meeting Gemma again brings back memories of their early childhood when Tom's family protected Gemma and her sister from an abusive parent. Gemma remembers Tom's parents, especially his father, as heroes and tells Kai stories about them. This creates additional pressure on Tom who feels he should also protect Gemma and Kai but is not sure that he has the willpower or strength to do so.

This is largely a novel about relationships - about Tom's relationship with his mother and sister; his relationship with Gemma and Kai plus his relationship with the memory of what his father may have done. Gemma also struggles with her attempts to bring up her grandson and to protect him from his parents. Memories of her past life contrast with the reality and challenges of her present life. The characters usually attempt to do the right thing but often it is not clear what the right thing to do really is.

Water, water everywhere

Landscape plays an important part in many novels, especially in Australian novels, and in Australian fiction water is often a theme. The large coastline of the island continent ensures that much Australian fiction is set near beaches. As well as physical descriptions of the landscape the power of water, especially of the ocean, can be viewed as a force to be challenged, a world of freedom or as an opportunity for escape. It can also be portrayed as part of the Australian psyche.

Two authors whose books often feature water in their books are Robert Drewe and Tim Winton.

Most of the short stories in Robert Drewe's latest book, The Rip, involve water in some way. In a number of the stories water is in the background, not a dominant force, but in some of the stories water is a central character. The author examines a range of relationships in the stories and the reactions of people to situations but in many of the stories the catalyst for the events that occur is water. The analogy of a prison to an aquarium, the reactions to a possible tsunami, the escape of swimming laps in a pool, the need to impress someone by challenging the sea are a few of the scenarios in this book of Australian short stories.

In 1993 Robert Drewe edited The Penguin book of the beach, a collection of 25 short stories written by authors from many countries including Australia. In the introduction Robert Drewe writes that he chose these stories "not only because I think they represent the best of contemporary shorter fiction writing about the beach - the coasts, ocean shores, bays, dunes, lagoons and rivers... They share a concern with pressing personal, social and political questions,, their satiric, humorous or fantastic sidelong glance often revealing more than direct realistic examination. ... The role of the beach in contemporary fiction may be literally gauged by the stories' subject matter. The vast majority deal with escape, often from the next most possible category - family and sexual relationships. These are followed in popularity by drowning, growing up and the mysterious voyage/journey to the Apocalypse." (p 4-5) Authors in this anthology include Graham Swift, Ian McEwan, Frank Moorhouse, Helen Garner, David Malouf and Tim Winton.

Water is a theme in much of the writing of Tim Winton. This is particularly the case in his latest novel, Breath. Set in Western Australia two young boys, Pikelet and Loonie, enjoy taking risks first in the river and then in the surf some miles from where they live. The book deals with relationships between the two boys and Sando and Eva but it also revolves around the relationship of the boys with the surf - the power of the surf, the danger of the surf, the allure of the surf. The need to conquer bigger and bigger waves. The need to take risks, to face death, to survive. The novel also explores sexual risk taking. Throughout the book there are references to breathing, the necessity for life. This is a beautifully written book.

The power of the surf to take over one's life is also observed in Di Morrissey's latest novel, The Islands. A love story set in Australia and in Hawaii, primarily in the 1970s, Catherines' life changes when she discovers the freedom brought about learning to surf and meeting challenges. The power of the ocean over the lives of many of the characters that Catherine meets when living in Hawaii is a major component of this book.

Learning to conquer fear of the ocean and learning to surf is a also a theme in Kathy Lette's new book, To love, honour and betray, a zany account of coping with a broken marriage and living with teenage daughters. Set in Sydney much of the action occurs at the local surf club where Lucy faces the challenges of gaining the Bronze Medallion as well as travelling down the hard road of self discovery.