April 2011 Guest Editor Lesley Lokko on Tim Winton...
Another Australian who’s got a way with words. I read Dirt Music years ago and was blown away by his prose, his magical attention to details, landscapes, weather, emotions, particularly when things are going wrong between couples...just stunning. I then read Breath, a surfing-coming-of-age tale that’s about so much more than waves and wet dreams and decided that I wouldn’t let the Noughties end without a visit Down Under. I didn’t...and his descriptions, particularly of the Queensland coastline, were staggeringly accurate. A real gem of a writer.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Dirt Music by Tim Winton is a novel about the power of love. Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded with a man she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. She spends her days in isolated tedium and her nights in a blur of vodka and self-recrimination. Until, early one morning, she sees a shadow drifting up the beach below her house. It is Luther Fox, an outcast, a man on the run from his own past. And now here he is stepping into Georgie’s life. He brings hope, maybe even love, but also danger . . . 'Compelling' Independent 'Beautiful' Sunday Telegraph
