Dirt Music Book

This is my last unread book from the 2002 Man Booker shortlist, which is the topic of a current discussion in The Mookse and The Gripes group. I am also planning to read several more from that year's longlist. This for me is the weakest of the six books, but it was still an interesting read.

The story is largely set in the wilder parts of coastal Western Australia. It has three central characters and their relationship is something of a love triangle, but to portray the book in those terms would be a gross misrepresentation. It is much more about misfits and drifters and their attempts to find a place to survive in hostile terrain, which makes it more like an Australian western. All of the three main characters have secrets they are scarred by and hide from one another, and only at the very end is any concession made towards a happy resolution.

At the heart of the book is Georgie, a drifter who has arrived in the fishing village of White Point on a boat with an ill-equipped sailor she wants to leave. She finds a place as the partner and housekeeper of Jim, a successful local fisherman and unofficial policeman of the local community who lives in the shadow of his more violent dead father's reputation. Georgie becomes intrigued by Luther, who has been poaching fish at night and has his own past as a musician whose family have all been killed in a car crash he survived. After a brief and impossible liaison with Georgie and reprisals from the White Point rednecks, Luther takes off on a trip north with a plan to attempt to live on his wits as a fisherman on a much wilder part of the coast. Georgie begins to settle for her life with Jim, but he conceives a trip north to find Luther.

This book is full of colourful Australian vocabulary, some of which stuck (quolls, spinifex) and others which I didn't check. It is uncompromising and quite long, in fact too long to hold my interest throughout - for me it could have been edited down to something a lot more punchy, but it is still quite a memorable read.