Dirt Music
Tim Winton is one of my favourite Australian authors, a big claim considering I have only read a couple of his books. But it's the way he writes, the imagery he creates, the way he tackles his characters and can make you love them and hate them and most of all, understand them and identify with them (or parts of them), just the way he intends you to. His characters are so real I feel like they really are walking around out there in the real world somewhere.