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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
A beautifully Australian book about two families who have both suffered hardship, and find themselves living together in a duplex in Perth. This is very much a character driven novel, and each character brings something distinctive and interesting to the table. I could not bring myself to put this book down, and found myself never wanting it to end.
I had mixed feelings about this book. It was very slow reading because of the Aussie slang and the jumping around from one thing to another without warning. And I don't know how many times I had to reread pieces because I got confused about which character was saying which sentences (lack of quotes didn't help). Many of the really short chapters (mostly those about the character Fish) made zero sense to me. Some of the members of the two families were also very much strangers to the reader, rarely talked about, and others seemed to be too much defined by one personality trait or habit. But there was enough good stuff to keep me interested in reading until the end.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Gut wrenching and beautiful.
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I'm glad I chose to read Mother Tongue at the same time as this book, otherwise some of the colorful Australian lingo would have been lost on me. I learned that gaol and jail are alternate spellings of the same place. I learned the phrases Fair Dinkum and cor.
The story didn't warm up until halfway through as the house became more of a character. When the family first moved into the house the author kept referring to its mysticality but we didn't get evidence of strange things afoot until Fish started wigging out. And I saw the Rose/Oriel comparison from the start, so I knew she and Quick would be together. But there was some marvelous writing, some well flushed characters and I was sad when it ended.
The story didn't warm up until halfway through as the house became more of a character. When the family first moved into the house the author kept referring to its mysticality but we didn't get evidence of strange things afoot until Fish started wigging out. And I saw the Rose/Oriel comparison from the start, so I knew she and Quick would be together. But there was some marvelous writing, some well flushed characters and I was sad when it ended.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars
A charming, magical story of two families brought together during the 1940s-1960s in post-war Western Australia.
The overbearing presence of unseen forces throughout the story keep the reader captivated - from the Shifty Shadow and Lady Luck, to the seemingly living, breathing haunted house on Cloudstreet shared by the Lambs and Pickles families. Each character develops throughout the book, coping with loss, tragedy and poverty in their own ways.
I loved the raw look at family life, but with hints of mysticism and magical realism to keep things from getting too incredibly dark. There's humor, there's pain, there's redemption, there's really everything. What a wonderful story.
A charming, magical story of two families brought together during the 1940s-1960s in post-war Western Australia.
The overbearing presence of unseen forces throughout the story keep the reader captivated - from the Shifty Shadow and Lady Luck, to the seemingly living, breathing haunted house on Cloudstreet shared by the Lambs and Pickles families. Each character develops throughout the book, coping with loss, tragedy and poverty in their own ways.
I loved the raw look at family life, but with hints of mysticism and magical realism to keep things from getting too incredibly dark. There's humor, there's pain, there's redemption, there's really everything. What a wonderful story.
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I bought this for our Australia trip and never managed to get to it while we were there, but I did read it when we returned. It follows the lives of two very different families, as they're uprooted by circumstance from their previous homes and find themselves living in the same house on Cloudstreet in Perth. It's an unflinching look, over multiple decades, of these two working-class families as they become involved in each other's lives.
This isn't a description that would typically get me excited to read a book. I'm not often a fan of stories that span over entire lifetimes. I find time jumps off-putting and they usually cause me to lose whatever connection I've built up with the characters, but the writing overcame any issue I had there. Tim Winton's writing was superb, so full of life, and Peter Hosking's narration of this audiobook was perfect. I think listening to this helped me appreciate the rhythm of the language more than I might have on paper, as I find is often also the case with novels set in the southern states.
I found the few supernatural elements in this a little jarring, but I think that was probably the point. Looking back on the novel as a whole, those moments do fit well, but they really felt out of place when they came up in the story. Maybe that is on purpose, as that sort of thing should be unexpected and confusing, and maybe if I understood the religious symbolism a bit more it would have felt more natural, but it just didn't seem to mix smoothly with the rest of the book.
This takes place in Western Australia, where we spent half our trip, so that was an added bonus. Things have obviously changed a fair bit since the descriptions in this novel, but it was still nice to be able to mentally place events on a map. We have Dirt Music in the house, so that will likely be the next book of his I'll try.
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This isn't a description that would typically get me excited to read a book. I'm not often a fan of stories that span over entire lifetimes. I find time jumps off-putting and they usually cause me to lose whatever connection I've built up with the characters, but the writing overcame any issue I had there. Tim Winton's writing was superb, so full of life, and Peter Hosking's narration of this audiobook was perfect. I think listening to this helped me appreciate the rhythm of the language more than I might have on paper, as I find is often also the case with novels set in the southern states.
I found the few supernatural elements in this a little jarring, but I think that was probably the point. Looking back on the novel as a whole, those moments do fit well, but they really felt out of place when they came up in the story. Maybe that is on purpose, as that sort of thing should be unexpected and confusing, and maybe if I understood the religious symbolism a bit more it would have felt more natural, but it just didn't seem to mix smoothly with the rest of the book.
This takes place in Western Australia, where we spent half our trip, so that was an added bonus. Things have obviously changed a fair bit since the descriptions in this novel, but it was still nice to be able to mentally place events on a map. We have Dirt Music in the house, so that will likely be the next book of his I'll try.
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