Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between"A fragmented, hilarious, crude, mystical soap opera. In a rich Australian idiom, Winton lets his characters rip against an evocation of Perth so intense you can smell it." - The Sunday Telegraph Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans - running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth - bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated."In this fresh, funny novel, full of wonder and dreams, Tim Winton weaves the threads of lifetimes, of twenty years of shouting and fighting, laughing and grafting, into a story about acceptance and belonging. Imagine Neighbours being taken over by the writing team of John Steinbeck and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and you'll be close to the heart of Winton's impressive tale." - Time Out“Cloudstreet gets you inside the very skin of postwar working-class Australians the way Joyce makes you feel like a turn-of-the-century Dubliner.” - Elizabeth Ward, The Washington PostWinner of the Miles Franklin Award and recognized as one of the greatest works of Australian literature, Cloudstreet is Tim Winton's sprawling, comic epic about luck and love, fortitude and forgiveness, and the magic of the everyday.

zlib/Fiction/Literary Fiction/Tim Winton/Cloudstreet_1782284.epub

Tim Winton

McPhee Gribble ; Viking Penguin

Simon & Schuster, Incorporated

Scribner Paperback Fiction

Atria Books

Ringwood, Vic., Australia, New York, N.Y., USA, 1991

United States, United States of America

Reprint, FR, 2002

lg_fict_id_562312|librusecid_501432

<p><P>Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, <i>Cloudstreet</i> exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction to captivate and inspire. <P> Struggling to rebuild their lives after being touched by disaster, the Pickle family, who've inherited a big house called Cloudstreet in a suburb of Perth, take in the God-fearing Lambs as tenants. The Lambs have suffered their own catastrophes, and determined to survive, they open up a grocery on the ground floor. From 1944 to 1964, the shared experiences of the two overpopulated clans &#151; running the gamut from drunkenness, adultery, and death to resurrection, marriage, and birth &#151; bond them to each other and to the bustling, haunted house in ways no one could have anticipated.</p><h3>Publishers Weekly</h3><p>``Luck don't change, love,'' observes Sam Pickles to his daughter Rose. ``It moves.'' Considerations of fate and love underlie Winton's ( Shallows ) wry novel, set in Western Australia, about two families thrown together in the years following WW II. Sam Pickles earns a modest living mining guano for nitrate until he loses his hand in an accident. Fortunately, the family inherits a rambling old house--the Cloudstreet of the title--in which they can live, although they still lack cash. The dilemma is resolved with the sudden arrival of the rigid, God-fearing Lamb family, whom the rather libertine Pickles take in as boarders. Following the quirky, deeply etched members of these families--``flamin whackos,'' in Quick Lamb's description--as they forge bonds and undergo travails, Winton explores the haphazard nature of human existence with a quietly focused ferocity. Featuring lyrical passages and rapid-fire, minimally punctuated dialogue, this satiric, affectionate family saga is tragic and hilarious--and often both at once. Winton shows himself a worthy successor to his countryman Martin Boyd, who portrayed the Anglo-Australian society of previous generations. (Apr.)</p>

In this fresh, funny novel, full of wonder and dreams, brilliant young Australian author, Tim Winton, weaves the threads of lifetimes, of 20 years of shouting and fighting, laughing and grafting, into a story about acceptance and belonging

Two families marked by tragedy are thrown together in a rambling house with a past. The Lambs and the Pickles struggle with chance and bad luck in the crosscurrents of the world.

2012-02-03