Cloudstreet

Number 1 Cloudstreet is a sprawling old house on the wrong side of the tracks in a Perth suburb, and now it is occupied by two working-class families down on their luck. There is a fence separating the yard, and within the house there are two kitchens, but the corridors and stairs are no-man's land, giving access to their bedrooms.

The Pickles's, who inherited the house - Sam with his injured hand, a desperate gambler who knows how to back a loser; Dolly, too much woman for one man, but with little ambition beyond the next bottle; and their kids Ted, Chub and Rose. Their story starts in Geraldton, where Sam worked on an offshore island collecting guano to make superphosphate until an accident with a winch took his fingers and thumb.

The Lambs, who are tenants, their rent providing a life for the pickles. Moved up from Murray River, where their farm came on hard times. Oriel Lamb, the sergeant-major of the family, Lester Lamb generally making peace and entertaining, along with their six kids. Daughters Hat, Red & Elaine, & sons Fish, Slow & Lon. Setting up a shop in the front room of the house was probably the smartest thing they had done.

The kids all have real names of course, but such is the Australian nature of the novel that they seldom get used. The slang is laid on pretty thick, which has put off some readers, but more because of the cliched ‘Ocker' nature, not because it is hard to understand.

Cloudstreet, the novel, charts the lives of these characters over a twenty year period (plus some backstory years), as they struggle, and prosper; fight and love; leave and return. Life revolves around Cloudstreet, the house. We are introduced to the families just before the end of the war in the 1940's and stay with them through until the 1960's.

I enjoy Winton's writing style. He can be flowing along with a story and with incredible abruptness Sam can lose use of his hand; or Sam's brother Joel dies of a heart attack on the beach (not really a spoiler, but sorry anyway). There is a bleakness to his writing, but there is a descriptive beauty too. Winton's writing connects the characters with the reader in an intricate manner I rarelys get from a novel.

For me, not a perfect novel, there were a couple of aspects I found odd or awkward:

Perhaps the strangest thing for a 400 plus page novel is that with a cast of thirteen characters only seven are fleshed out. Ted, Chub, Hat, Red, Elaine & Lon are barely sketched, the story being all Sam, Dolly, Rose, Oriel, Lester, Fish and Quick.

The other is the magical realism - with which I seem to always struggle. Some of it worked - the water/sky elements with Fish. The house having its history sort of worked with the shadows of its prior occupants. Primarily these aspects worked with the Fish character - as a result of his drowning is intellectually stunted, but he sees and hears things others don't. He talks with the pig, he plays piano with the former occupants, and he displays some foresight. But there were also Aboriginal ghosts which didn't really fit into the story, and some other aspects I won't outline here for spoilers.

But enough of the negatives, I will finish with a quote I liked, about Sam at a two-up game.
P271 of my edition.

From above, the two-up circle looks like a sea creature, some simple hungry organism in the water of night. A sea anemone whose edges rise and fall as bodies press and spread with two glittering morsels turning and dangling in its maw. Two coins spinning above the pulsating mouth, catching light and shining to tantalize. But they're men down there and the coins' light shines on them the way the sun and moon have never done. A swearing, moneyflicking, beery mob of blokes dancing to the music of the toss, the dance of chance. They call in intercession, they pray and whine and moan as if those two big crosspainted pennies can hear them. See among them the little fella with the stump and the mad light in his eyes, crazy as a crusader, mad as a cut snake, driven as a dog.