Dirt Music

By Belinda Luscombe Sunday, June 02, 2002
    • Luther Fox, riven from his family, seeks oblivion. That's not hard to find when you are an illegal fisherman off the remote West Australian coast. Georgie Jutland, a seen-it-all nurse, is looking for healing. They meet. Things get prickly. After Thomas Keneally (Schindler's List) and Peter Carey (True History of the Kelly Gang), Winton is Australia's most revered writer. But he is younger and more averse to romanticizing his harsh native landscape. Dirt Music is like that landscape: you can't skip through it, but its unflinching beauty will get you in the end.