Day 8:

Cloudstreet

I’ve read most of Tim Winton’s books, the novels and the short story collections, and Cloudstreet remains my favourite. I first read it after watching the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club, back in the days when it was still named that, and Marieke had nominated it as one of her all time favourites. To me, Cloudstreet is uniquely Australian, quirks and all, and I love it, enough to have more than one copy of it. It’s also a book that I’ve given to my Dad, and I’m pretty fussy about which books I gift to him! I am yet to watch the TV adaptation, despite having bought it when it first came out. I suppose, I’m slightly worried they may not have done it justice and I don’t want this to tarnish the magic of Cloudstreet for me. If you’ve watched it, let me know what you think please!

Cloudstreet gets the laughing while I am crying tick of approval. It has all the feels in a big Australian way.

Winner of the Miles Franklin Award and recognised 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.

After two separate catastrophes, two very different families leave the country for the bright lights of Perth. The Lambs are industrious, united and – until God seems to turn his back on their boy Fish – religious. The Pickleses are gamblers, boozers, fractious, and unlikely landlords.

Chance, hardship and the war force them to swallow their dignity and share a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet. Over the next twenty years they struggle and strive, laugh and curse, come apart and pull together under the same roof, and try as they can to make their lives.