claire_fuller_writer 's review for:

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

3.0

---

I know there's a lot of love for this book and aspects of the writing were tremendous. The way Winton creates new and resonant words, and wonderful rhythms: 'a booklumpy bag', 'the immodest backs of the oilslicked women', 'the sky was the colour of kerosene' - it sometimes reminded me of Under Milk Wood. But, you know when an author over-uses a word and then you can't stop seeing it. In this book Winton loves 'mob'. It's used about every five pages and it got so I was looking out for it. But that's a silly thing; something that should have been caught in the copy editing. My bigger problem was the story. Two large families come together and live in a ramshackle house in Perth, and we see them grow up and older over the space of twenty years. Winton clearly, deliberately writes the novel in a kind of ramshackle, crazy way: flitting from one character to the next, not often stopping to rest or let me catch breath, and I simply didn't enjoy this. It meant that many of the characters (Hat, Red, Lon etc) were shadowy - not fully developed, and I didn't really care about any of them. It begins to settle onto Rose's and Quick's story as the book progresses, but this happened too late for me to worry about their fate.

And one more thing... I get highly irritated by writers / screenwriters who name genital anatomy incorrectly. Winton - sorry to have to tell you, but it's not possible to see the notch in the top of someone's vagina. You wouldn't mistake a penis for a testicle. Please get it right.