kwokheng's Reviews

Dirt Music feels really sad. It’s a very slow piece.

I’m only midway through it because it feels poignant with a lot of pain.

Sometimes I have to re-read passages because the words seem to pass me by.

I am getting the feeling Tim Winton’s books ought to be read twice:

1. To get a feel of the prose;
2. To really get to know the characters and the emotional depth of the novels.

I wonder who his ”ideal reader” would be.

It’s like there are so many things left unsaid in the dialogues you get the feel the characters know each other really well and you, the reader, are only scratching at the surface of what their lives are about.

I can’t picture the story in my head as well as I usually do with other fiction. It seems the emotions run very deep. It’s, I think, part of the charm of Tim Winton’s writing.

You can’t really call it ”melancholy” in the typical sense but there is a plain, everyday nothing-special-is-happening sort of feel to the prose.

Everything seems offhanded. It’s a very different writing style compared to what I’m used to reading.

Unlike postmodern fiction which may be decidedly non-linear, the story is linear by large but due to the style of writing, doesn’t feel so.

They seem to know one another intimately.

They seem to be next-door neighbours you didn’t know you had; their secret lives held out for you to see in a glazed sort of way through an old dust-covered window.

They’d fit the definition of Velveteen Rabbit’s ”real”.

Some seem like the kind of good friend you I wish to one day find. The kind you can lean back to look at the stars with, to smile the knowing smile with, to catch a glint of a mischievous twinkle in the mutual eye.

Though the conversation would be blunt. It would be funny having that sort of friend to look at the stars with: as though the peacefulness of looking at stars - seemingly a mimicry of a scene from an English romance novel - would be punctured suddenly by the guttural sound of ”fuck”.

Each word remains as it is, always only a stab in the dark.

Reading Dirt Music can prove intense. (read less)