As a reader, what I love about Winton’s books are his characters. Flawed, complex and very human, they make the story for me in all of his books. Listening to an audio version of Dirt Music, I found myself focusing on the dialogue, which is plain and circumspect. As a result, it took a lot longer for me to engage with the book when listening than it ever has when reading. In the end, however, the audio version was incredibly powerful. When you’re riding on a suburban train on a dark Melbourne autumn night, the evocation of Winton’s hot, dry, windy Western Australia—as told through Suzi Dougherty’s incredible narration—is so powerful. I found myself slitting my eyes against the sun in the middle of the night and waiting until the last possible minute to switch the iPod off and stop the book, just so I could snatch an extra few seconds of the story. Twelve hours seemed a huge time commitment in the beginning, but once I engaged with the narrative, the book just flew. Dougherty’s Georgie Jutland is perfectly voiced and her narration captures the other, very Australian, characters beautifully. Dirt Music would make a fantastic accompaniment to a driving holiday.