From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Cloudstreet

Tim Winton

Start date: March 1, 2016

Finish date: March 31, 2016

Discussion: Around the World 2016

Why we're reading this: Our ATW poll winner for the March Oceania group read.
[close] Our ATW poll winner for the March Oceania group read.

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Around the World 2016

* December ATW "catch-all" month group discussion
By Wendy · 8 posts · 30 views

last updated Nov 24, 2016 04:33PM

* ATW 2016 Welcome / Schedule
By Jen · 29 posts · 83 views

last updated Jun 30, 2016 10:54AM

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What Members Thought

Mar 02, 2016 El rated it liked it

Shelves: 20th-centurylit-late, library-borrow

First off, this is an incredibly hard book for me to rate and review. It started out so strong, I really loved everything about it and couldn't wait to get to know each of the characters in more detail. And there are quite a few characters. The Pickle family and the Lamb family. They come together in an unexpected way when the Pickles move into a large house called Cloudstreet thanks to an inheritance, and because they are poor, they take on the Lambs as tenants. The two families are rather diss First off, this is an incredibly hard book for me to rate and review. It started out so strong, I really loved everything about it and couldn't wait to get to know each of the characters in more detail. And there are quite a few characters. The Pickle family and the Lamb family. They come together in an unexpected way when the Pickles move into a large house called Cloudstreet thanks to an inheritance, and because they are poor, they take on the Lambs as tenants. The two families are rather dissimilar, except they both are experiencing hard times and, of course, have familial issues that threaten their existences in ways that many families experience in their lives.

It's billed as a family saga, and I agree with that. It certainly is. It spans about twenty years of the lives of the Pickles and the Lambs, and we get to know each of the family members fairly well, though I think some characters stand out more strongly than others. I felt close to Rose, for example, throughout the book, whereas others, such as Quick, didn't really feel like a whole person until later on in the book.

As I mentioned, the beginning started out strong for me, but by the middle of the book I found myself frustrated and not caring so much as to what was going on. Originally I liked how the story was told in bite-sized pieces which made it read quickly because you could pause easily wherever you wanted and pick it up and delve into another part of the story without really losing speed. By the middle of the book, however, I found it irritating and I wanted to spend more time with the characters, I wasn't making any connection to them anymore.

And then by the end of the novel as characters started coming back together in more ways than one, I found myself engrossed again and not wanting to put it down. It was a strange switch, and I couldn't tell you where in the story it started and stopped. But it was there, giving me trouble connecting with the story in an overall sense, even though I so much had wanted to when I started. It's that middle of the book - I'm side-eyeing it now. I can't really trust the middle of this book.

But this is still a story that will stick with me because it is powerfully written. Winton is a powerful writer if this is any true indication, and I will be reading more of his work to find out for sure how I feel about him. It's an Australian novel and it is Australian in prose (I swear this is a thing, I felt it with Patrick White as well), dialect, and slang. I loved that because it felt more authentic, even if I found myself chuckling at some of the words. Silly Aussies!

I love the little secrets of this novel, the way it gives voice to the disabled and the working class of mid-century Australia. I want to hug many of these characters, and throw things at some of the others. No one is all good and no one is all bad, which is really what life is about anyway. We have this idea of people, often the people in our own families, and we're not always right, our memories aren't always right, and our perceptions aren't always right. Winton really hit the nail on that particular head with this book.

Anyway, I liked the book but can't say I loved it. Like I said, it's hard to rate and review. I'm glad to have read it, but I'm not sure who to recommend it to because it's definitely not for everyone. ...more

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Feb 23, 2016 Larry rated it it was amazing

I won't even attempt to tell the story that is in this book. Let's just say two families share a house in Perth, Australia for several decades. Time passes, the people change, and the House continues.

It's just a stunning book in its use of language, development of characters, and the story itself. The word unforgettable is used too much for many books, but Cloudstreet is exactly that. I believe I will remember this book for the rest of my life. Some of the minor characters, ones who are non-fami ...more

16 likes · Like · see review

Mar 02, 2016 Petra rated it liked it

This is a hard book to review. I have a few conflicting thoughts on it.
First, this is an interesting family saga, spanning about 20 years in the lives of 2 families who live in one house. The families are different in temperament, lifestyle and ambition. They coexist, rather than cohabitate.
The story starts strong. I as pulled into the story right away and didn't want to put the book down. By the middle of the book, I found myself not really caring too much about the families and wanting the st ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 25, 2013 Lise Petrauskas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, 20th-century-fiction, australasia

I so enjoyed this book. It is written in short bursts of chapters that are difficult to stop reading. Winton's ability to write descriptively is excellent, both of the physical world and the interior world of his diverse and flawed yet sympathetic characters.There is just the tiniest bit of magic in the rickety, ramshackle world these characters inhabit, and it's just the right amount. Any more and it would feel like magical realism, which isn't my favorite genre. This guy's writing is on a par ...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Julie rated it liked it

Shelves: australia, read-in-2016

I had mixed feelings about this book. It was very slow reading because of the Aussie slang and the jumping around from one thing to another without warning. And I don't know how many times I had to reread pieces because I got confused about which character was saying which sentences (lack of quotes didn't help). Many of the really short chapters (mostly those about the character Fish) made zero sense to me. Some of the members of the two families were also very much strangers to the reader, rare ...more

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