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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
This novel tells the tale of two working class Australian families living side by side but painfully separate and gradually growing together. Characters undergo a personal journey towards independence, while simultaneously learning to be part of a family. Cloudstreet does not paint a picture of a perfect life; it is the arduous journey towards acceptance of personal identity and as part of a family that truly makes this book a resonant and worthwhile read.
Overall, this book is a vivid and amusing insight into working class life in Australia post-Second World War, and I urge you, Australian or not, to give it a read.
Overall, this book is a vivid and amusing insight into working class life in Australia post-Second World War, and I urge you, Australian or not, to give it a read.
This one has been on my "to be read" shelf for years. In the next few months, I'm trying to clear out the ones that have been languishing around for years and make a concerted effort to actually read them.
Sam, his wife Dolly and their 3 children are down on their luck, as Sam has lost fingers in an accident. He's prone to gamble away his paycheck anyway, and his wife isn't much better with her penchant for drinking and smoking. A wise uncle left a home to the family when he died with the condition that it can't be sold (or gambled away) for 20 years. They actually use their noggin and decide to rent half the house to the Lamb family.
The Lamb family, headed by Lester and Oriel, are hard-working, religious, and maybe a bit quirky. They have 6 children, one of which nicknamed Fish who has brain damage after an accident.
The house brings these disparate families together as they learn to cohabitate over the course of 20 years.
I watched the miniseries before I read the novel, and it does feel like the novel is a bit choppier than the miniseries. Particularly toward the end of the novel, there are very short chapters, and it's more difficult to get into.
Sam, his wife Dolly and their 3 children are down on their luck, as Sam has lost fingers in an accident. He's prone to gamble away his paycheck anyway, and his wife isn't much better with her penchant for drinking and smoking. A wise uncle left a home to the family when he died with the condition that it can't be sold (or gambled away) for 20 years. They actually use their noggin and decide to rent half the house to the Lamb family.
The Lamb family, headed by Lester and Oriel, are hard-working, religious, and maybe a bit quirky. They have 6 children, one of which nicknamed Fish who has brain damage after an accident.
The house brings these disparate families together as they learn to cohabitate over the course of 20 years.
I watched the miniseries before I read the novel, and it does feel like the novel is a bit choppier than the miniseries. Particularly toward the end of the novel, there are very short chapters, and it's more difficult to get into.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
maybe the silent generation should’ve stayed silent
This is the most self-consciously literary book I’ve read in a long, long time. At first it was really enjoyable – Winton is truly a talented writer and there were so many sentences that were just spot-on perfect descriptions. That’s amazingly hard to do – find exactly the right word or image. And Winton has that talent.
BUT this is like The Great Gatsby, where Fitzgerald labored over every idea and word to produce a book instead of a novel. Characters are used in the service of the book or theme, rather than to serve themselves. Everyone is fleshed out, but no one seems whole. This is a perfect English class book – but I feel it’s a little...much. By the halfway point I was like, “this story is still going on!?!?? Is the plot ever going to kick in? Are the characters ever going to evolve?” Ummm…nope.
The Lambs and the Pickles are two sides of the same coin. The Lambs are (ex)-religious folk, who believe in family and hardwork. They run a successful corner shop and have a rambunctious family of (mostly) happy children – although Fish became developmentally disabled after drowning and Quick lives the life of the guilt-ridden. The other children are some barely remembered gaggle of girls and a younger brother. The landlords are the Pickles, who are a deeply unhappy, barely functional family that believes in luck and personal pleasure – Sam is a charming gambler (horse races are his drug of choice) who is generous when he is flush, but usually he's lost everything. Dolly is a beautiful alcoholic who uses beer and strange men to make herself feel better. Both parents pretty much neglect their children. The boys are nonentities, but Rose Pickles is a priggish girl who reacts to the chaos of her home with a craving for order. She hates her mother and becomes anorexic just to spite her. Rose Pickles and Quick Lamb are essentially assigned to represent their generation in their respective families, since none of their siblings really have anything besides one-word personality traits (except the brain-damaged Fish, who gets a weird magical-realism place in this book). Rose and Quick are the only two characters that I think actually developed - the parents essentially stay who they were throughout the book, except softened a bit by age and tragedy.
Winton is a beautiful writer, but he needed to end the book a good hundred pages earlier and actually develop his characters instead of using them as props.
BUT this is like The Great Gatsby, where Fitzgerald labored over every idea and word to produce a book instead of a novel. Characters are used in the service of the book or theme, rather than to serve themselves. Everyone is fleshed out, but no one seems whole. This is a perfect English class book – but I feel it’s a little...much. By the halfway point I was like, “this story is still going on!?!?? Is the plot ever going to kick in? Are the characters ever going to evolve?” Ummm…nope.
The Lambs and the Pickles are two sides of the same coin. The Lambs are (ex)-religious folk, who believe in family and hardwork. They run a successful corner shop and have a rambunctious family of (mostly) happy children – although Fish became developmentally disabled after drowning and Quick lives the life of the guilt-ridden. The other children are some barely remembered gaggle of girls and a younger brother. The landlords are the Pickles, who are a deeply unhappy, barely functional family that believes in luck and personal pleasure – Sam is a charming gambler (horse races are his drug of choice) who is generous when he is flush, but usually he's lost everything. Dolly is a beautiful alcoholic who uses beer and strange men to make herself feel better. Both parents pretty much neglect their children. The boys are nonentities, but Rose Pickles is a priggish girl who reacts to the chaos of her home with a craving for order. She hates her mother and becomes anorexic just to spite her. Rose Pickles and Quick Lamb are essentially assigned to represent their generation in their respective families, since none of their siblings really have anything besides one-word personality traits (except the brain-damaged Fish, who gets a weird magical-realism place in this book). Rose and Quick are the only two characters that I think actually developed - the parents essentially stay who they were throughout the book, except softened a bit by age and tragedy.
Winton is a beautiful writer, but he needed to end the book a good hundred pages earlier and actually develop his characters instead of using them as props.
I thought I should read this because it's considered a "great work of Australian literature". However I found this book boring as anything, the characters had no development, random events would suddenly be introduced, and the lack of quotation marks is just annoying.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My Penguin copy calls this book "the modern Australian classic". Well, I thought it was okay, but it didn't really do a lot for me. I'm glad the Book Club didn't select it recently!
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Wow. The best writing that i have ever had the privilege of laying my eyes on. so poetic in some places and so crude in others. a perfect balance that was shockingly satisfying. i love all these characters dearly. i also was rlly intrigued with the hints of australian gothic that winton sprinkled in. unsure how i feel about the ending. it was well constructed. definitely will reread in the future. the type of book i would gift to my literature teacher
Cloudstreet was a fantastic Australian novel. I fell in love with the characters, even if some of them were not so lovable.
One thing that did annoy me was the lack of quotation marks but I moved on from that.
One thing that did annoy me was the lack of quotation marks but I moved on from that.